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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28002111">It Happened One Night</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflow3rs/pseuds/sunny'>sunny (sunflow3rs)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>bark bark now in english [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Bokuto and Yamaguchi are just humans, Kuroo is a hunter, Kyoutani too cuz ??, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, No Beta, Tsukki and Akaashi are werewolves, Violence, Werewolves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:33:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>28,229</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28002111</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflow3rs/pseuds/sunny</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If a few years ago Bokuto had been told that he would end up living with two werewolves and a hunter (a werewolf hunter) in a tiny apartment in Tokyo’s downtown, he wouldn’t believe it. Oh, c’mon, where would the wolves do their needs if they didn’t even have a balcony?</p><p>or, </p><p>Tsukishima, Akaashi, Kuroo and Bokuto recall the beginning of their peculiar relationship at Mr. &amp; Mrs. Smith’s style, at the request of the older one, who is not sure of how to explain to his parents that lycanthropes exist and, in fact, he is dating two of them. Besides, the third of them is a hunter that wanted the other ones dead. Yeah… It’s a big mess, right? Well that’s why they are going to make a video!</p><p>Rating M for violence!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou/Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei, Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei, Kyoutani Kentarou/Yamaguchi Tadashi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>bark bark now in english [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050965</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>It Happened One Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            A translation of

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27426148">Sucedió una noche</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflow3rs/pseuds/sunflow3rs">sunflow3rs</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've translate my own fic cuz yolo you know. If you want to read it in spanish, it's in my profile ;). </p><p>I'm sorry for the mistakes. It's not beta and maybe it's all rushy. I AM SORRY OKAY JUST DONT BE FUCKING MEAN OR ILL CRY and you dont want me to cry right? I'm kidding. </p><p>Am I?</p><p>Now, seriously, I love this four and the KyouYama interacition is just,,,,, chef kiss. You can find me in Twitter by @sanflowuers if you want to talk about this shit. </p><p>THANKS YOU FOR READING I HOPE U LIKE IT. &lt;33333</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When to Bokuto, a twenty years old healthy man, comes his handsome boyfriend whom he adores with all his soul because Agasheee, you are so cool!, and he tell him that he is a lycanthrope, that his body is capable of reorder his bone structure under his skin and that can be filled with an unusually silky blackish fur, Bokuto think it’s the best thing that has happened to him in his immaculate existence.</p><p>If he is honest with himself, the truth is it’s not like he can think of anything else. Werewolves are like huge dogs that their strong arms wouldn’t crush if they hugged them with a little more enthusiasm and he imagined that when he threw a ball, they would run to look for it and deliver it to him in the same palm of his hand. How can this not be perfect?</p><p>Okay, maybe if he had a machine that took him back to the past -or a car, he is not going to say not to this- he would change the way he found out that Akaashi is a werewolf. It wouldn’t have hurt to have discussed the matter when they began their relationship there in the youngest one’s last year of high school, maybe on the third or fourth date, or even as a stellar and romantic confession after the magical moment in which they gave each other their first times. But just for the fact that he would like to have his knee as decently as it always had.</p><p>Although, if changing a single second of everything he had lived meant that, at present, he was not going to be in front of that camera with Akaashi, Tsukishima and Kuroo squeezed into the small sofa in their living room, watching him without having a clue about why they agreed to do what they are about to do, he wouldn’t mind breaking his same knee a thousand times more. So Bokuto, a twenty-seven healthy young man, loves every minute of the existence he shares with these pretty boys.</p><p>“I think it’s ready,” he advises, his lower lip between his teeth and his brow furrowed in a magnificent expression of concentration that the other men rarely get to see. Bokuto had spent all the morning trying to understand how the camera that Yamaguchi lent him works, but after hours of fiddling with buttons and taking pictures of his feet, he begins to believe that it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to ask the kid for advice. He would even hire Yamaguchi as a cameraman.</p><p>“I hope you didn’t break it, Yamaguchi had a hard time getting it,” Tsukishima complains, shifting uncomfortably at the little space he has to stretch his long limbs, locked between Kuroo and Akaashi. Bokuto makes a face that assure to him that the device is in perfect condition, waving at the air as a gesture of less importance that ends up hitting the tripod that holds the camera. The object swings dangerously in front of Bokuto’s fearful eyes, but he manages to catch it in time. “Kou…”</p><p>“It’s okay!” He manages to exclaim before his name, in a warning tone, comes out of his boyfriend’s mouth. Bokuto nods, more to himself than the others, and walks around the coffee table to sit on the stool Kuroo had brought him from the kitchen. The small sofa is not enough for four adults -not even three-, besides Bokuto believes that it’s a better plane’s organization. “Well, I think I’m gonna start it, right?”</p><p>Bokuto slaps himself on his thighs, rubbing his sweat in his shorts, not sure how he should begin the video. He looks at Kuroo with the vague hope that the man will give him a hand, but his expression filled with excitement at the anticipation of the past they plan to spend the afternoon remembering is genuinely false, so he cannot help him. It’s not that Kuroo is not interested in the story that led them to start the relationship a couple of years ago, far from it, it’s just that he just still feels guilty of everything he did wrong at the time. Remembering it as if it was a beautiful love story only makes the mistakes repeats over and over again in his head, feeding the internal demons he thought were extinct.</p><p>“Can you repeat why are we doing this?” Asks Tsukishima, who unlike Kuroo does, he doesn't hide the disgust he gets from talking about this very personal topic in front of a camera. Did no one see the obvious problems that this entails? What if the video falls into the wrong hands? It’s not like he can say they are the best people to be in the spotlight, remember, Akaashi and he are fucking lycanthrophes.</p><p>Akaashi climbs his feet up onto the couch, propping his heels on the cushions ang hugging his knees to his chest, giving Tuskishima more room to stretch his own legs. He glances at his boyfriends with some nonchalance. Akaashi has just been woken up with very soft and loving kisses from Bokuto, so he has enough patience to bear some of the craziness the boy has for ideas. Also, he has to admit that making a video explaining how they started dating, the problems they had to go through and the reality they face to send it to their parents-in-law isn’t such an insane suggestion.</p><p>“Because it’s important to Kou,” Kuroo replied, still with his feigned emotional smile, passing his arm over Tsukishima’s arms to stick it a little closer to his body so the space Akaashi had left him is useless. Tsukishima sighs. Ah, it 's true.</p><p>“I’m thinking that you guys don’t want to do this as much as I do,” Bokuto thinks aloud, giving his boyfriends a suspicious look as they shake their heads in different effusive ways: Kuroo doesn’t mind if they talk about everything that happened as long as they skip the part when he’s the bad guy; The only thing that really bothers Tsukishima is the camera recording and the power that comes with the one who have the video in their gans, which can go quite wrong; And Akaashi doesn’t care or bother any of this stuff and if he is honest with himself, all he hopes id that they finish in time for when his favorite show starts.</p><p>“You can begin with Tetsu and Kei,” Akaashi says. Bokuto opens his eyes in surprise as if he has forgotten that part and suddenly feels enlightened by the pleasant wisdom of his partner. He vibrates on his seat with accumulated emotion and the other three look at him with a hint of confusion, believing the man is hiding something more than this elaborate plan.</p><p>However, they ignore it because Bokuto can tell how they started dating with the same frequency with which he asks what Kuroo is going to make for dinner, being his favorite subject to attract attention in the increasingly large family lunches, without changing a bit of his excited tone in any of his repetitions.</p><p>And if they think about it, the truth is it’s time for Bokuto's parents to also know the story. After all, they’ve been in a relationship for five years and Bokuto has never been very good at keeping secrets.</p><p>Tsukishima shrugs, leaning back on the couch, a little embarrassed. Why is he always the first to enter the scene? They can perfectly start with the part where Bokuto and Akaashi met or, better, where Bokuto and Kuroo did, which was long before him. But no. Why is it more interesting to talk about how a teenage Tsukishima lost control of his body when another teenage Kuroo paid the minimal attention to him? Tsukishima is so ashamed to remember the event that he even finds it degrading. He was a complete fool for not realizing what was happening.</p><p>It’s one of the few things Kuroo is proud of -something about his incredible intellect and the years of training or whatever- so Tsukishima it’s not going to take away from him either. Not before fighting a little.</p><p>“Sure. Let’s start with how Tetsu tried to suffocate me in the training camp,” Tsukishima mutters in a mocking tone, more to make his own shyness disappear than anything else, and Kuroo pinches the skin on his shoulder above his shirt, recriminating. “Sorry, sorry. Let’s start with how Tetsu ‘managed to take advantage of his kouhai’ in the training camp.”</p><p>“Kei!”</p><p>Bokuto raises his hands interrupting Kuroo’s complaint. “I am the one supossed to tell it, guys!”</p><p>Kuroo snorts and takes away his arms from Tsukishima to cross them watching Bokuto with an annoyed frown. Tsukishima scores it as a victory and feels a little more willing to remember that day, placing his hand on his former senpai's thigh for the sole purpose of letting Kuroo know that he was just joking. Akaashi waits intently for Bokuto to stop messing with whatever he just shoved into his pocket and start telling the story once for all.</p><p>“Well, mom and dad, our wonderful relationship started in my wonderful Fukurodani, like it has to be…”</p><p>-</p><p>It was Tsukishima’s first summer camp; A week full of training sessions at all hours surrounded by dozens of teenagers who like him were sweaty and tired most of the time. The truth was the idea didn’t seem to be very promising. He had to put up with his teammates which was a big deal considering that Hinata, Kageyama, Tanaka and Nishinoya weren’t the most calm and non.noisy people he’d ever met. Furthermore, he had been forced to deal with the captains of Fukurodani and Nekoma who had dragged him towards the door of the third gym after each practice as if it weren’t enough.</p><p>It was also the first time Tsukishima had been away from home for so many days and perhap, this was the problem that made him most uneasy. He had visited the meteorological website a thousand and one times before agreeing to travel to Tokyo, so he knew for a fact that there wouldn’t be a full moon in any of the seven nights that would happen in the place. So in theory he had nothing to worry about.</p><p>Still, he felt that at any moment he would lose his nerve and end up transforming himself in the middle of the academy under the eyes of each teenager.</p><p>What if his ears poked out while he slept and the next morning he was awakened by a scream from Hinata? What if in the middle of a match -those who kept losing- he stressed enough to show his fangs to the first one who dared to speak to him? Nekoma’s captain, Kuroo, kept staring at him with those pierced eyes… What if he had already figured out what he was and was just waiting the perfect moment to smother him with one of the pillows?</p><p>Yamaguchi had told him he was paranoid. He didn’t have to think of the worst scenario ever because his willpower was quite stoic and because of this the probability that he would lose control was low. At least, that was what his mother explained to him. Also, his best friend was by his side to prevent that kind of thing from happening, but Tsukishima kept thinking Yamaguchi wouldn’t be there forever.</p><p>Tsukishima, a sixteen-year-old salty blonde, almost suffered a panic attack in the middle of the backyard of Fukurodani’s Academy while Yamaguchi was yelling at him about how he was getting carried away by nerves. You have nothing to fear! he told him, you aren’t going to lose control and no one will hurt you!</p><p>Yes… Maybe Yamaguchi wasn’t as smart as he throught. Or maybe he was just too confident in Tsukishima’s feelings which was more likely. Still he managed to convince him, at least for the moment, and the werewolf forgot the anxiety of being so far away from his family to distract himself by playing volleyball at the third gym.</p><p>Akaashi, Fukurodani’s vice-captain, was the person who noticed his presence as soon as he walked through the door. He caught the attention of the other two, who approached with some swiftness to welcome him gloriously to their humble abode, and got Lev and Hinata to stop trying to strike up a conversation with a disinterested Kenma.</p><p>They were playing for about an hour and half before Yachi knocked on the door demanding in a few minutes the cafeteria would serve dinner and Tsukishima felt the time had flown. He had been so engrossed in the game with Kuroo’s advice and Bokuto’s screeching when one of his spikes was blocked that he had barely remembered his peculiar problem.</p><p>He had stuck his head into a sack containing only volleyball and more volleyball, one that made him unable to see everything that was going on around him and allowed his sweat and fatigue to take enough control to disrupt him.</p><p>“It smells so good… Is it dinner? I’m starving!” Bokuto whimpered, helping Akaashi fold the net while Kuroo and Tsukishima were busy putting away the balls. Kenma had managed to sneak away the second Yachi had called for dinner and Lev and Hinata had followed him closely, almost completely forgetting to clean the court they had used.</p><p>Kuroo hummed an assent while Tsukishima ignored Bokuto’s comment. In theory he should be the one who had a better sense of smell than the other due to the fact that he was a freaking lycan, but he was only able to smell the sweat on their bodies, the plastic of the volleyballs and the wet dirt that had recently been soaked with a gentle summer drizzle. He supposed the man was so hungry that he had just started to ramble. He was quite confident after his little dispute with Yamaguchi, so he gave Bokuto the privilege of knowing his soft side.</p><p>“You can go to eat now if that’s what you want. I can clean this for my own” Tsukishima said, putting the last ball into the bad. Anyway, all that was left was to mop the floor which he could do perfectly himself. Akaashi looked up and handed him the net, narrowing his eyes and looking at him suspiciously, which Tsukishima didn’t understand how he should have done, quite distracted by the hiss of glee that had come from Bokuto’s mouth.</p><p>“You are the best, Tsukki!” The captain yelled. Bokuto wasted no time in grabbing Akaashi’s wrist and walking alongside him to the exit. “Are you coming, bro?”</p><p>Tsukishima blinked confusedly at Kuroo when he shook his head, asking his colleagues to come forward that he would finish helping with the cleaning to which Bokuto did not impede him. Akaashi, however, did cast a suspicious look at the couple who were felt alone within the walls of the third gym.</p><p>“I don’t mind picking up this, Kuroo-san, so you can go,” Tsukishima snorted, carrying the net and the bag of balls back to the storage room, believing Nekoma’s boy was staying for the sole purpose of checking that he did it right. He wasn’t a kid and neither was Hinata or Lev. Why didn’t he put a little more faith in him?</p><p>“I’m just being a nice senpai,” he explained, entering the room behind him with the net irons in each hand, setting them in their place behind the door. He took his time waiting for Tsukishima to enter in search of the mop that decorated one of the corners. When he did, he walked behind him, cutting off the lighting from the court with his body. Tsukishima frowned.</p><p>“Kuroo san, do you mind? I don’t see.”</p><p>However, Kuroo did not answer him, much less turn away. Tsukishima turned around to confront the older man with an annoyed expression lurking on his face and when he wanted to realize it, the captain had pushed him against the wall, keeping him cornered with the mop stick digging into his spine.</p><p>“What are you doing?”</p><p>Kuroo’s fingers, those long and hidden under a bandage that he had placed as soon as he began with these additional practices, wrapped around Tsukishima’s throat adorning his skin as if it were a late-model necklace. The child’s hand curled around the opposite wrist in panic. How was possible that Kuroo was so strong? He was a damn lycanthrope, it was absurd for a mere human to incapacitate him with a simple grip on his neck, so why choul him?</p><p>“Bokuto said it was the food that smelled good,” Kuroo spoke in a small whisper, anticipating anyone who entered the gym wouldn’t be able to hear them unless they got close enough. His eyes watched Tsukishima as if of the two he was the animal that at any moment would let its jaws come out and attack the child’s neck. “But I’m pretty sure the scent is coming from you.”</p><p>Tsukishima opened his mouth trying to breathe a little better. Was there a smell coming out of it? How was it that he hadn’t noticed? Was Kuroo also a lycanthrope? Maybe that’s why he was attacking him, maybe he was claiming his territory, maybe that’s why he had been able to dominate him. The tears appeared with some rapidity with the sole purpose of blurring the vision of the frightened child who seemed more like a helpless puppy than a furious wolf.</p><p>Kuroo took pity or whatever, but the grip on his throat loosened. His fingers traveled to Tsukishima’s lips as he took deep breaths without still understanding that the heck was going on.</p><p>“What are you doing?” He asked again, his voice certainly shaky. He noticed Kuroo’s smile in a hint of demisting of his glasses, accompanied by a click of his tongue that was nothing more than a simple warning. Suddenly, his mouth was being forced and the captain’s fingers were outlining Tsukishima’s teeth as if the index were a pencil and his fangs the blank canvas.</p><p>“Don’t bite,” Kuroo warned in a demanding tone. Tsukishima was beginning to think that, in fact, Kuroo was someone far removed from the lycan lineage. If he was not mistaken, the oldest was checking if in that situation of terror and panic his jaws had come out as an unequivocal proof of the nature of his interior. He was making sure that Tsukishima really was what he thought he was.</p><p>If Kuroo discovered that the answer to his belief was affirmative, the werewolf would be in great trouble from which he would surely not make it out alive. He would be forced to transform himself in the middle of that tiny room and fight Nekoma’s captain in what would become a battle that only one person would be able to get out of the gym. If it happened, Tsukishima could already start praying to the gods he didn’t believe in, because he wouldn’t have any kind of chance with a hunter.</p><p>A hunter, Tsukishima repeated to himself. Kuroo was a bloody hunter and he had fallen into his trap with an ease that any other of his kind would have embarrassed.</p><p>Kuroo pulled his finger from Tsukishima's mouth with full confusion and frustration. There was no indication of a future fanged outbreak and the attack had been surprising enough to have succeeded. Was he wrong? But it was impossible… Tsukishima gave off that smell that for many years he had learned to distinguish, a soft and caramelized fragrance that flooded his lungs with a certain sense of relief and tranquility capable of clouding even the strongest hunches. He had been trained for it!</p><p>He couldn’t have attacked an innocent…</p><p>“What the hell are you doing!?” Bokuto’s voice resounded back into the gym with a deeper echo from the room Kuroo had locked himself in with Tsukishima. The two boys stared at the door, surprised, glancing at the two Fukurodani players they had shared the afternoon with, who were frowning at them. At least Akaashi kept his eyebrows in a straight line that clearly showed how upset he was with the situation. Bokuto had resigned himself to screaming. “Oh my God! I can’t believe you got your dirty hands on our Tsukki!”</p><p>Tsukishima blinked, not understanding his comment as Kuroo walked away from him, putting his hands up as if he hadn’t actually been about to strangle him, his face completely flushed at the idea Bokuto had proposed. Kuroo clung to it as long as he could to prevent his false accusation from ever seeing the light of day. He didn’t believe he had failed in that miserable way, but if he was honest with himself, deep down he was a little relieved that he had made a mistake. He wouldn’t have liked to have to murder Tsukishima, after all, they boy was quite nice. </p><p>“You can’t come in just like that, Bo!” Kuroo complained with his hands on his hips. “I was in the middle of something!”</p><p>Bokuto let out another squeak as if his friend’s reply had annoyed him even more and he rushed to grab Kuroo to get him as far away from the room as he could. However, Akaashi strode into the warehouse to make sure Tsukishima was safe and sound. He knew he shouldn’t have left those two alone, not after the younger’s fragrance spread so openly at the last minute, much less with the knowledge of the guild that Kuroo formed.</p><p>“Has he hurt you?” He asked, whispering and still being able to hear Bokuto scolding Kuroo for the supposed flirting attempt that had been interrupted. Tsukishima looked at Akaashi with tears still in his eyes, suspicious, putting his hand to his neck as he coughed in a vague attempt to regain his composure. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you… But it seemed you had everything so under control that I thought you were just playing.”</p><p>Tsukishima raised an eyebrow not understanding what Akaashi was talking about. What should he have warned him about? Was he a freaking hunter too? The setter seemed to read his mind and hearing how far apart the other two boys were, he gave himself the pleasure of showing Tsukishima the fangs he was hiding.</p><p>He was surprised, leaning against the wall and letting himself slide a few inches lower, not being able to take his eyes off the way Akaashi’s teeth stood challenging in front of him.</p><p>“You’re a..” Tsukishima admitted, more out of his own disbelief than anything else. Akaashi let out a sigh and nodded his head. “And he’s a hunter…”</p><p>Akaashi reaffirmed the assumption. Tsukishima was a Sendai’s small wolf who didn’t know any of the dangers that had to be endured every day in a big city like Tokyo. Who had lowered his defenses at the worst of the times and had been carried away by mere effusiveness of a couple minutes of volleyball. It was pathetic.</p><p>“And all of Nekoma,” Akaashi explained. Tsukishima had heard more than once that there were some other schools, high schools and colleges especially prepared for the sons and daughters of hunter’s families where they learned how to get rid of a werewolf with the same ease with which they studied English. But not in Miyagi.</p><p>Akaashi’s hand tangled in his hair now that Tsukishima had crouched down to his level and they both found it certainly comforting to have found a werewolf who was not related to their families.</p><p>“Better keep an eye out.”</p><p>-</p><p>“It was so obvious that you were a werewolf, damn, I spent years believing I had attacked an innocent for nothing,” Kuroo complains, throwing his head back in a hint of defeat, dropping it on the back of the sofa. Tsukishima pats his thigh in a very vague show of support.</p><p>“I’m still innocent,” he remembers. Kuroo raises his chin and looks at his boyfriend with a raised eyebrow, then smiles mischievously to take the issue away.</p><p>“Guilty of stealing my heart, Moonshine.”</p><p>Bokuto whistles at the comment, clapping as if Kuroo had just won an imaginary contest that consisted of making Tsukishima blush, and gazes at the camera wondering if it would be precisely apparent from the other side how red his boyfriend has turned. Tsukishima sighs and Bokuto looks at Akaashi, who already has his eyes fixed on him, waiting for him to continue with the story.</p><p>“The part that comes next is a little… Bloodier,” Bokuto says, smiling sheepishly at the red light on the table. Kuroo stops teasing Tsukishima, who has grown smaller between his two boyfriends, and takes a quick look at the self-proclaimed official storyteller.</p><p>“Oh no. Can’t we summarize it? Skip everything that happens up to the moment we kiss?” He complains again.</p><p>Bokuto wrinkles his nose wondering if the man is being serious or just joking. C’mon, he can do it like this but it takes away the essence of the whole story, right? It would be left unfinished and by the end he’s sure this other half-quarters wouldn't get the reaction he envisioned.</p><p>“Sorry, bro, but I have to tell the things just how they happened. Don’t worry, look how we finished!” Bokuto tries to cheer him up . Kuroo barely smiles, the touch on his thigh anticipating his mind wandering to any other unwanted place, and he nods looking dazzled by the glow on Bokuto’s face. All because Kuroo adores those pounds of pure muscle enough to recreate the story again, otherwise there was no reason in his entire existence that forces him to bathe his memory with the unpleasant forgotten memories.</p><p>“Besides… “says Akaashi calling their attention. “We all did bad things.”</p><p>Kuroo glances at him suspiciously as if he doesn’t believe what he’s saying -which in fact, he doesn’t. All the things Tsukishima, Akaashi and Bokuto had done in all their years of friendship and romance would ever compare to the monster he once was.</p><p>“But I was the cause,” he whimpers. Tsukishima must have pinched his thigh when he notices how the crease of his upper lip trembles, threatening the beginning of a cry, and Kuroo looks at him in annoyance at the repetition of his own gesture. “Kei!”</p><p>“It’s not your fault,” he tells him. Kuroo stares at him but manages to let out a tired sigh and nod his head. Tsukishima appreciates it. “Go on, Kou.”</p><p>Bokuto watches his boyfriends one last time before returning to the camera.</p><p>“Like I was saying, mom, dad, after the training camp we moved to two years later and, well, it’s a bit more violent; The day of the accident. The day I discovered this incredible world of giant dogs.”</p><p>-</p><p>Despite the fact that college life was more difficult than American movies let on, with no parties or fraternities and with tests every week, Akaashi hadn’t had any trouble adjusting to his new obligations. He hadn’t finished the third month of his first year, with semester exams still as far from his head as the idea of stepping into a sauna in the middle of a desert, when he told himself that he would be able to go beyond the extra effort that college supposed.</p><p>Although his statement wobbled over the limits of lying every time he entered that class in which the teacher only read a Power Pont and recommended Spanish romanticism’s books as if this were the only genre that was worthwhile within the spectrum of literature universal.</p><p>It was not his favorite subject. Every time he entered that class he would get on his nerve, either because of his teacher’s shameless zero enthusiasm, the girl with whom he shared a desk -she kept glancing at him next to undoubtedly flushed cheeks-, or the presence of two hunters who hadn’t made a single attempt to hide the disgusting death’s scent they gave off. The men were a couple of normal friends who sat in the back row and played games on their phones without even pretending to pay attention to the teacher.</p><p>Akaashi knew they hadn’t realized that he was, in fact, a werewolf. He had always been very good at hiding his scent or controlling his boydu, so rarely was anyone outside his pack able to discover it. He had been raised in the city so his relatives had more than taken care of educating him so well that even the hunter with the best sense of smell wouldn’t be capable of knowing his secret in a day-to-day situation.</p><p>Hunters were the least of his worries at this point in his life. If he was honest with himself, the only thing that was most important to him at that exact moment, leaving aside the college and that damn subject, was Bokuto. His boyfriend.</p><p>They had known each other for years but it wasn’t until recently that they had finally decided to start a relationship. The truth was that it was all Kuroo’s fault, when during last winter holidays he decided to kidnap Bokuto, Tsukishima and him to spend a lovely weekend between blankets, beer, fast food and Christmas movies. One of those nights the situation got out of hand and before they knew it, Bokuto and Akaashi tongues intertwined themselves without any separating intention.</p><p>Akaashi, a nineteen-years-old stressed student, was completely and frankly in love with Bokuto, and there was no being in the fullness of the planet that managed to separate him from his side. He had gone crazy for a simple human and, although he was sure that his parents would criticize the matter, he would stay with him as long as Bokuto allowed him.</p><p>Their relationship was quite normal. They spoke every day on the phone and saw each other when their hours allowed. After the first few months, when Akaashi started college and his time became a little more limited, they created a vague tradition in which Bokuto would pick up Akaashi after his last class on Fridays to go together to the mall, to the movies or to play arcade games.</p><p>(Kuroo and Tsukishima would scoff when the photos reached the group chat they shared, complaining about how cheesy and lovey-dovey their two friends were.)</p><p>Therefore, that Friday was not going to be different. Bokuto found Akaashi at the college gate and greeted him with a louch screech that caught the attention of, as always, the people walking around him. His deskmate almost ran past him, accidentally bumping into the two hunters from his literature class. Bokuto was the one who approached to help the girl while one of the other men, whom Akaashi didn’t recognize, began to grab the girl's books.</p><p>“Sorry” she exclaimed, completely ashamed. Bokuto and the stranger laughed then, assuring her that nothing was wrong and asking her if she was alright.</p><p>Akaashi frowned, not having moved from his place and watching what was happening as if he was the extra in some kind of movie, and sniffed the air, guessing with some ease that the new addition to the hunter duo was also one of them.</p><p>“You really smell good, dude!” The man said once they handed the books to the girl. He slapped Bokuto on the back in a thoroughly pleasant gesture that he found amusing. Bokuto smiled at him.</p><p>“Thanks, man! Well, look, I don’t wear cologne or something,” he laughed embarrassed. The hunter raised an eyebrow in surprise and Akaashi, from the distance, could only think of the worst. The stranger was smeling his damn fragrance impregnated on Bokuto’s body.</p><p>“We have to go, Bokuto-san.” Akaashi managed to stop the conversation before the hunters tied the knot, grabbing his boyfriend’s wrist and bowing his head toward his classmates in a vague farewell. Bokuto watched him wondering what bug bitten him to behave in such a rude way, which was unusual for someone like Akaashi. The youngest, almost reading his thoughts, snorted. “If we take a little longer, they won’t let us into the cinema. Do you want to miss the movie?”</p><p>Bokuto found that excuse more than enough.</p><p>“Ah, Akaashiii... Do you think they’ll make a second one? I want to see more!”</p><p>The movie was over and although it wasn’t Akaashi’s favorite genre, he had to admit that it had been better than he would have expected. However, Bokuto had been fascinated by every single minute of the two hours they had spent sitting in front of the giant screen. Now, they walked calmly down the street looking for an open coffee shop to buy the ice cream for which Bokuto had been crying for some time.</p><p>“I don’t know, Bokuto-san. If it’s successful, maybe they’ll do it,” Akaashi replied, not at all interested.</p><p>Their shoulders were flued side by side as they wandered back and forth under the dark Tokyo night. Time had flown inside the cinema and the late-night schedule had trapped them within those velvety walls. Their hands, although they were quite close together, were not intertwined, but their pinkies kept consciously close to each other, waiting for the key moment when people around them had disappeared enough to be emboldened.</p><p>Fridays were Akaashi’s favorite days and his wonderful dates with Bokuto were the only splendid cause of that. The three men who appeared behind them when they turned the street, however, were potentially close to ruining that beautiful tradition.</p><p>Akaashi wasn’t entirely sure where they had come from, his footsteps were so calm and smooth that had they been ordinary humans he would hardly have noticed them. Being a lycan, his nose was certainly more developed. He couldn’t ignore, then, the disgusting smell that these people radiated, a smell of putrefaction and decay to which he was already used.</p><p>If he was not mistaken, they were the hunters from his literature class and, as the latest acquisition, the man who had touched Bokuto.</p><p>Akaashi guesses that just as he had predicted, the unknown hunter had discovered his scent on Bokuto and he couldn’t believe he had served his head on a silver platter as a true rookie. It was as if he had put a neon sign on his shoulders that read “I am a werewolf, please kill me and all my friends and family” while showing his jaws and claws. That man had discovered his nature and now… Akaashi had endangered his boyfriend.</p><p>He glanced at Bokuto, who continued to talk without rhyme or reason about how much he had liked the movie, that the murder scene managed to make his hair stand on at the end, or that the stting was just perfect. Akaashi didn’t listen to any of the words that came out of his mouth, unable to get out of his own mind the trouble he was sure was coming. He had been so long ignoring the nature of his being, playing the normal life of anyone else’s mundane life and trying to graduate from college, he even dated a human…</p><p>Now fate reminded him that he could never have something like that.</p><p>Bokuto was in danger and it was all his fault.</p><p>It wasn’t like in any other situation Akaashi had been scared. In fact, he was quite confident in his fighting methods, being trained since he first transformed when he was only four years old, and no matter how good the three hunters were, he could finish them off fairly quickly. The thing was that with Bokuto there, everything suddenly became real. The same Bokuto who spoke with the biggest smile of the recent movie that he had proclaimed his favorite. The one who made his stomach turn to a churning of bile with a little glance that he regurgitated nervously.</p><p>Akaashi ran his tongue over the surface of his lips and without waiting a second longer, he entwinted his hand with his boyfriend’s. Bokuto had time to stare at the union in gratifying surprise before tripping over his own feet when, in the blink of an eye, Akaashi started running down the street. The youngest had realized the only thing he could do was run aways from those three hunters, shelter Bokuto somewhere out of harm’s way, and go back for the evil guys when he made sure nothing bad was going to happen to his former captain.</p><p>“Agasheeeeeee!” Bokuto exclaimed, stunned, not believing that outburst of spontaneity he had just given Akaashi, allowing himself to be dragged along the sidewalk while avoiding pedestrians as best they could. Akaashi responded by squeezing his hand even tighter, asking him to not separate from him and to trust his actions, without having to say a word. Bokuto understood, in his own way, and allowed the race to continue until they turned a new street.</p><p>The foul scent of hunters was not smelled by the time Akaashi decided to walk into an alley and hide behind some garbage cans. He placed his hand over Bokuto's mouth to prevent him from making a comment perhaps loud enough to attract the attention of anyone passing through the area, but they had gotten far enough into the narrow path for the noise to be dispelled by the sound of two stray cats fighting over a can of tuna, or the same melody of the night city.</p><p>Akaashi looked at Bokuto, then, his wide and confused eyes watching him with drops made up his forehead due to the sudden rush. Akaashi felt his own sweat had caused his bangs to stick to his skin and he removed his hand from Bokuto’s mouth to shake his hair in a bit of annoyance.</p><p>“Wow, Akaashi. What was that?” He asked, amused, confused and blissfully surprised. Akaashi let out a huge heavy breath, resting his hand on Bokuto’s shoulder without touching the grimy wall he had stamped it against.</p><p>The relief of having lost the hunters, together with the adrenaline of having almost been caught was enough for hum to stamp his lips with the other in that same alley. Also, a hot made out session in a public place was a wonderful excuse to explain the race and, on top of that, a perfect way to upset both Kuroo and Tsukishima when it came time to tell them.</p><p>“I love you,” Akaashi sighed, being completely eaten by Bokuto’s mouth. He didn’t respond, unable to formulate a word at the intensity with which his lips, tongue and hands moved, and continued with his self-proclaimed task of finishing Friday night as good as always had been.</p><p>They parted, then, when they remembered that oxygen was something that had to get into their lungs and not hold it in horrible gulps of air between kisses. Bokuto entwined his arms around Akaashi's hip and Akaashi hid his nose in his neck, flushed from the effort of the run and the kiss, pressing his nose against his boyfriend's throat and breathing in the scent as if he had missed him.</p><p>“Surprise! We’ve found you.”</p><p>Akaashi opened his eyes, placing the palms of his hand on Bokuto's chest while with an enormous slowness he raised his head. The alley had suddenly narrowed with the arrival of the three hunters who had been chasing them, his two classmates on his left watching him with an amused smile and the stranger on his left eliminating the only escape route they had. Bokuto's arms tightened around his waist, not understanding what the people he had run into at college were doing there, and he wondered if it was some kind of bully group dedicated to annoying quiet people.</p><p>“Did you really think you could escpae, you fucking dog?” The same one said again. It was a boy from his class who was addressing him, his hands behind his back as if he were some kind of innocent schoolboy, shaking his head from side to side like a true psychopath. Akaashi had no idea what his name was, but he was pretty sure he was the leader of the trio he had formed.</p><p>How had they guessed where they were hiding? He hadn't smelled them at all, had he been making out with Bokuto for so long?</p><p>“Do you guys need something?” Bokuto asked with a feigned smile in an awkward attempt to hide his uncertainty. His huge palms rested on Akaashi's shoulders while without looking at him, unable to take his eyes off the only other person who had spoken, he placed his boyfriend behind him.</p><p>Akaashi couldn't believe that again, in less than fifteen minutes -he thought-, he had thrown Bokuto back into a well overflowing with problems. He did not realize that he had begun to tremble until he rushed to pinch Bokuto's jacket so that he did not move from his place, nor did it occur to him to approach the hunters.</p><p>The man completely ignored his question, and it was the one on the right who took his turn to speak.</p><p>“It’s a nice surprise to learn that you also are a whore,” he mentioned.</p><p>Akaashi tightened his grip on Bokuto knowing that the comment would trigger the start of a fight that wouldn't end well for either of them. If only Bokuto wasn't there, he could shed the excess itchy skin on his body, and throw himself at the jugular of his attackers. He was sure he could finish them off in less than ten minutes if he wanted to. But Bokuto… Bokuto was there and he couldn't get his presence out of his head. He didn't want anything to happen to him, he didn't want to be attacked, he didn't want to drag him into that world.</p><p>“What did you just call him?” Bokuto started to complain, however, Akaashi pulled him back and took a step in the direction of his two classmates.</p><p>“We don’t have to do this.”</p><p>He tried to be brave, but his high, broken voice didn't help at all. He was terrified of what those people could do to his boyfriend. Yes, he could attack those two and in one leap finish them off, but what if the other one grabbed Bokuto? What if they murdered him as well, as they had planned to do with him?</p><p>His classmates laughed and the second, the one who was not moving from side to side excitedly, clicked his tongue in annoyance.</p><p>“We’re not going to let a monster like you leave,” he told him.</p><p>His brow was furrowed and he seemed genuinely angry at the mere presence of Akaashi around him. It was hatred that he felt every time he heard about the lycanthropes as if these were the special human beings, to whom God had given a special power that they did not deserve and that, therefore, had to be exterminated. What they had within them was not something angelic. They were almost the gate of hell.</p><p>“Look, we’re in the middle of the street. We can go anywhere else, please,” Akaashi continued, taking another step forward, still without losing the sight of the hunter on his right. He felt how Bokuto muttered his name in confusion, the straight line in his eyebrows and the grimace of not understanding anything continued to predominate on his face, beginning to worry that there was something that his boyfriend had not told him.</p><p>“A fucking great idea!” Exclaimed the leader. “We’ll let you take us to the wolf’s mouth too!”</p><p>Akaashi clenched his hand into a fist. This… This couldn't be happening to him. Why were there such people in the world? He just wanted to buy some damn ice cream and end their date in the best possible way. He hadn't done anything! Yes, in his past he had fought with more than one hunter, but it had always been the opposite one who had started the disputes. It was they who sought, who plundered, who attacked. They were the real animals.</p><p>“At least let him go, he’s not like me,” he asked, not bothering to point at Bokuto. The hunter on the right, whom he had not forgotten, let out a great sigh that got his attention.</p><p>“Can we finish this? I’m hungry and for some fucking reason the McDonald’s closes early.”</p><p>The hunters on the left snorted in anguish at the comment of their third member. They were taking it as a stupid game, of course! Akaashi looked at Bokuto. He seemed scared and he wondered if he was too. He did not know what to do to protect him, he did not know how to take care of him and if something happened to him it would all be his fault. His face turned pale suddenly, and the sound of a click echoed off the walls of the alley with such force that it brought the lycanthrope back to reality.</p><p>One of the hunters, the leader one who had his hands on his back, had drawn a grayish gun and was aiming it directly at Akaashi’s head. If he was right, enough metal bullets awaited him inside it to take down a pair of werewolves with a single accurate shot. That was something new for him. The Tokyo hunters he used to face always carried medium daggers that were easily hidden in any secret pocket of clothing. A pistol was more difficult to conceal, no matter how effective it was.</p><p>“Hey, hey, hey!” Bokuto caught his attention, raising his hands up and walking towards the attacker with terror laminated in front of his eyes. He left the hunter on the right behind him, moving closer and closer to Akaashi with the clear intention of intervening, in the worst case, in the path of the bullet. Akaashi couldn't allow that, he had to do something, anything, and he had to do it now. “Leave that! We haven’t done anything!”</p><p>“Wait, you’re the one in the volley team, right? The acrobatics dude?” The hunter with the gun acknowledged, feeling it dangerously on their faces, again as if the whole situation were a complete and fun typical game on their Friday nights. Bokuto sighed then, believing that being a recognized face, his back would be safe. The hunter raised his pistol hand to his chest and smiled. “Big fan.”</p><p>The following happened in the blink of an eye, but Akaashi from where he saw it, less than a meter from Bokuto, felt like it had passed in slow motion. At one point, the hunter with the pistol had the gun to his chest and pointed at the alley wall with no specific target, and at another, Bokuto was lying face down on the ground with the heel of the hunters boot they had targeted left behind them -terrified enough with the gun to pay attention- pinned to his tight.</p><p>Akaashi watched, then, as that same hunter scolded his nose and grabbed Bokuto's leg, almost as if the news that he was a volleyball player had enlightened him. The scream sounded so loud inside his head that the lycanthrope stopped listening to what was happening around him, his ears were completely plugged, his boyfriend's open mouth no longer emitted any noise, nor did he hear the hunters talking among themselves. His eyes, focused on the bone that had appeared right next to Bokuto's knee, didn't even deign to blink.</p><p>Blood trickled down the floor and Bokuto's pain-laden gaze collided with Akaashi's horrified. At that moment he didn’t think… About anything. He pushed out of his mind the self-defeating thoughts of berating himself for having waited long enough to be hurt by the only person he cared about, or the simple situation in which they found themselves whose responsibility was due to him and only to him. He let go of that mentality and told himself that when he was done with those bastards he would have time to scold himself for their behavior, but that was not the time.</p><p>Bokuto was not at all sure what happened that night. Yes, he remembered going to the movies with his boyfriend and also the beginning of that fight. Everything became a little more blurry as the time for the knockout on his knee arrived and what happened from now on lives in his memory like a nightmare come true.</p><p>Akaashi, his boyfriend, whom he had known since he was sixteen, had dug his nails into his forehead and pulled at his skin, making every bit of human appearance disappear. A huge, all-black snout took its place, then, with glowing blue orbs staring at the three hunters who had begun arguing as the prey they were about to become. His huge fangs dug into the neck of the boy with the weapon, snatching it from his hands and throwing it to the opposite side, drowning out the pained moans that Bokuto was still gasping for on the ground. He bit down, tilting his gigantic, hairy head back, taking with him the chunk of muscle that could fit in his teeth.</p><p>His other classmate threw himself onto his back in a vague attempt to suffocate him, but Akaashi backed up hard against the wall to crush him against it. His gaze traveled to the third hunter, the one who had broken Bokuto's leg and was running desperately towards the gun lying on the ground. He had to catch him before he got the gun, one way or another. His long arms traveled to the head of the man behind him, lifting him into the air until he was in front of him, interrupting what was to be the beginning of a plea to God, or to him, for someone to pity his soul, turning his neck on its axis.</p><p>The wolf dragged him to where he was, positioning himself on top of him and grabbing his hands to prevent any movement. He brought his mouth to his face and felt the fear in his eyes, the horror, the fear of being eaten by those jaws full of saliva and blood. Akaashi groaned, not being able to think of anything other than Bokuto's bone out of place. That should not have happened. It was all his fault!</p><p>Akaashi's oversized mouth opened wide enough that the hunter was unable to see the starless sky at night in Tokyo. The last thing his eyes saw was the darkness that lived inside the animal's mouth as it was eaten by the one he had called a monster. Akaashi wasn't about to disprove those labels, and if he was honest with himself, he couldn't care in the least.</p><p>He got up then, and his complexion dropped a few inches as he approached Bokuto to check that he was still breathing. His eyelashes were half closed, lying there in the trash of a rotting alley, his leg completely broken and a pool of disgusting blood of different kinds mixed with his own.</p><p>“Akashi…”</p><p>Akaashi reached for the phone in Bokuto's clothes knowing that his had been destroyed, as well as all of his clothes, with the transformation. He could not call his parents, he was sure that he did not care at all what happened to his boyfriend and that they would allow him to die in front of their eyes if they ensured his silence. He didn't even think about it, in fact, when he wanted to give an account, his number was already dialed on the phone. He responded on the second touch.</p><p>“Tsukishima? Something has happened.”</p><p>-</p><p>Akaashi hides in his seat now that all eyes have been fixed on him, the star protagonist in that violent part of the story in which he let himself be carried away by his wildest instincts, without a trace of pride kept in his memory. If he had a time machine, he would probably change whatever it took so that Bokuto could continue playing volleyball like he did in the old days, and no one, not Tsukishima or Kuroo, would do anything to stop him. He doesn't feel arrogant about his actions, not because they seem unreasonable to him, but because they happened too late. If he had transformed before, maybe his boyfriend’s leg would be intact, if he had done so many things…</p><p>"Don't look at me like that," Akaashi complains, crossing his arms and spreading his legs over Tsukishima's lap. “I didn’t do anything wrong…”</p><p>Bokuto raises his hands, not even he was the one to complain about it, and Tsukishima strokes his calves with the clear message that he thought the same too. Akaashi had done what either of them would have done if they had found themselves in a similar situation. Kuroo, however, snorts like every time the subject is brought up.</p><p>"If you had been there, if you had seen how it fell on the floor..." Akaashi continues, his gaze falling lost on the floor of his living room, recalling the incident with the same amount of detail from the first day. Kuroo doesn't comment and starts stroking Akaashi's toes, knowing that unlike Bokuto he doesn't have a hint of tickle in them.</p><p>“Now let’s talk about nice things. What comes next?” Kuroo asks and then remembers. “Oh, yeah. The nasty stuff. I can’t get enough of hearing how Kei plays a sexy nurse.”</p><p>Bokuto's laugh brightens the house, as it always has, and he claps his hands against his thighs again in a new excited gesture. Yes, the story of how Tsukishima took care of Bokuto after Akiteru, his older brother who is also a vet, fixed his leg, never fails to change the more tense atmosphere to a much calmer and more pleasant one.</p><p>“Best of the afternoon! Mom, dad, you aren’t going to believe it but I had an operation in a vet. Yeah, I know! It was crazy! But it went great, look at me! Also, like Tetsu said, I had Kei to keep me company while I recovered.”</p><p>-</p><p>Summer vacation had never been so fun. Tsukishima was not a boy who adored the high temperatures of the warmer months, or the scorching sun that hit his skin practically melting it. Nor was it as if the idea of what August entailed made him particularly excited: his plans were divided into going to the Fukurodani Academy camp to which they were still invited, and spending the rest of his days without class at his family mountain house.</p><p>Well, yes, if he had to choose, he would prefer to repeat the second option a thousand times if that meant not facing the danger that Tokyo posed at that point.</p><p>However, that year he had a free pass to skip the tedious week of training on the other side of the country. His mother would not have let him set foot in Tokyo anyway without the protection of someone else belonging to his pack. Hinata and Kageyama had complained, saying out loud that he didn't care about volleyball at all, that he would leave it as soon as high school was over, and that he didn't care what happened to the team. Yamaguchi intruded, then, saying that the first and second grade boys were more than enough to defend Tsukishima's position.</p><p>So his usual week in Tokyo had been spent this time at his family's cabin. It was located somewhere in the middle of the forest, like one of those in horror movies that appears out of nowhere with wooden walls and broken glass, although this was much more modern and, in fact, it was not abandoned. It had two floors and a huge white facade that was about to get a coat of paint. His backyard extended into a tiny esplanade in which there was a small garden where his mother planned to plant vegetables when it was time for it.</p><p>Tsukishima has visited that cabin every weekend since he was a child. It was in the middle of his hallway that he first transformed into a lycanthrope and it was in his forest that he learned to behave like one. He took Yamaguchi with him when he confessed to him, back in his pre-teens, that he was a werewolf, and Yamaguchi brought Kyoutani with him years later when he was found as a helpless puppy. In that place, Akiteru taught Saeko the nature of his being and she returned the play, taking everyone by surprise when her own skin fell like dust on the ground.</p><p>Now, with a seventeen-year-old Tsukishima - about to turn his long-awaited eighteen - heating in a cauldron the soup that his mother had left him in a tupperware, with the noise of a telephone conversation echoing in the living room, that house too it had become the place where Bokuto had spent most of the year locked up with one leg in a cast. Akiteru still wasn't sure how he'd managed to get Bokuto to survive when Akaashi laid him unconscious and nearly bled, on his vet's gurney. They had had to ask for blood from Tanaka, who by fate shared the same type, for the operation to be as successful as it was needed.</p><p>It had been a horrifying couple of hours for Tsukishima and Akaashi, who had waited outside with the obligation to support each other until the intervention was finished.</p><p>The ringing of his phone caught the attention of Tsukishima, who turned on his heel to check if Yamaguchi was the person who had texted him, unlocking his phone on his second try. The Tokyo camp was supposed to have just ended and as soon as he could, Kyoutani and he were going to get closer to the house. However, the person who had contacted him was none other than Kuroo, who wrote to him every day.</p><p>Nyan Kuro♡: hello tsukki!!! What are you doing? You don't talk to me as much as you used to, nobody does :'( Can you tell what's keeping you sooooooo busy????</p><p>Tsukishima let out a sigh. It was getting harder and harder to continue sharing messages with Kuroo in that casual way they had become accustomed to, at least since Akaashi's fight with those three hunters that had left Bokuto in that state, finding himself unable to bear the anguish at the idea that Kuroo was one of those, a werewolf killer who wouldn't hesitate for a second to put a silver bullet in the middle of his forehead. He replied as curtly as ever and wondered if it was time to change the stupid nickname he had given himself.</p><p>The noise of the bubbles in the saucepan brought him back to reality and, putting his cell phone aside, he turned his concentration on the soup. Feeling that it was warm enough, he turned off the heat and looked for the tray with which he had been bringing the food to Bokuto, who spent half the day sitting on the couch with nothing better to do than read the boring and not at all illustrative books about dinosaurs from Tsukishima.</p><p>He approached, careful not to spread a single drop from the soup bowl, walking calmly towards the living room, where Bokuto was on the phone with Akaashi. His right leg was covered in a supposed white plaster that at that point was full of drawings that each of the people who had entered that house had left him. Since Tsukishima couldn't be in the cabin during the week because he still had to go to class and finish his last year of high school, his mother, Akiteru, Saeko and even Kyoutani were dedicated to going up to the field to check that Bokuto was okay and, then, keep him company.</p><p>"Oh, Tsukki just brought me soup," Bokuto said, watching the contents Tsukishima deposited on the coffee table, waiting for the injured man to finish the call to place the tray on his lap. “His mom makes it and it’s so, so, so good. Can’t I stay here forever?”</p><p>His mother wouldn't mind. Without a doubt, she was one of those who most enjoyed Bokuto's presence, making him whatever kind of food he asked for and spending most of her free time playing Uno with him. They had gotten along quite well, which Bokuto found comforting considering how much he missed his own family. He had spoken a couple of times with his parents and his sisters, telling them a little lie in which he informed him that his volleyball club had taken him to an academy, as if he were an idol, and that he would not be able to go visit them in a time.</p><p>Tsukishima wasn't sure if they believed it or not, but at least they hadn't called the police.</p><p>“Akaashi says hi,” he said, putting his hand on his speaker as if that was preventing his boyfriend from hearing him. Tsukishima vocalized a very vague thanks. “Tsukki says hi too! When are you coming?”</p><p>Akaashi hadn't been able to step inside the house since he left Bokuto in it. He had had to return to Tokyo as quickly as he had left to be able to clean up the damage he had done, continue with his college life so as not to raise suspicions of any strange eyes and try to prevent more hunters from discovering that he was that giant black-haired wolf and bright gaze that had butchered three of his men in an alley. He had asked his pack for help, not to mention Bokuto's name, and they had agreed to clear his name as best they could. Anyway, they were used to that kind of thing.</p><p>“I miss you, Akaashi…” Bokuto whimpered, looking up from the fingers of his skin that were revealed by the cast to Tsukishima's scolded face, who saw his friend like that made him much more sorry than he was that he would have admitted. "Tsukki does it too, even if he doesn't say so."</p><p>Tsukishima rolled his eyes, then, shifting his gaze to the window on the side of the sofa so as not to give Bokuto the pleasure of noticing his flushed face. Akaashi was his friend, of course he missed him! Things had changed radically since the accident and their relationships were different, noticing the hint of sadness and despair in each of their conversations. There were times when Tsukishima just wanted to have Akaashi by his side and take refuge in the crook of his neck, just like he did when he was little and something scared him, hiding in his mother's arms.</p><p>“Yes, I’m good. Be careful,” Bokuto finished the conversation, realizing that the soup could get cold. "I love you."</p><p>Bokuto hung up the call, looking at Tsukishima with a silly smile, having noticed with almost astonishing clarity how his cheeks had lit up like a red light at a traffic light. Tsukishima clicked his tongue and tried to ignore it as much as he could as he concentrated on placing the food tray on Bokuto’s lap, again, without spilling a single drop of its contents.</p><p>"Are you going to feed me today too, Tsukki?" The boy asked, almost as a joke. Tsukishima narrowed his eyes, preventing his body from the foolish urge to pinch Bokuto on the shoulder, not at least until he had finished eating.</p><p>"Your hands are fine," he complained, sitting much more comfortable in the chair, with one elbow resting on his back, "and I told you that this was only going to happen that time."</p><p>"Oh come on, Tsukki," Bokuto huffed, puffing out his cheeks and putting on his best abandoned puppy face he could have played. Tsukishima, stoic as he had always been, ended up shaking his head. "Well, you win! But later you will let me pet you, right?</p><p>Another thing that he had discovered in that time of confinement was that Bokuto was a faithful lover of animals, especially dogs, and did not miss a single opportunity when it came to stroking him when he transformed. It was one of the first things he confessed to him when he began to explain the world he had entered, the existence of werewolves and their scathing counterparts and innate enemies, the hunters.</p><p>He explained the three forms that a lycanthrope has: the human, the door between the two worlds -which was the one with which he had half seen Akaashi fight- and the huge wolf. He also had to make him understand that no matter how much he bit him, he was not going to be able to turn him into one since it was something that was only transferred by lineage.</p><p>Since that day, Bokuto hadn't stopped asking anyone who kept him company to become that giant wolf that was so gentle. Akiteru and Saeko were the ones who had the most fun with it, when they had time they would go out to the patio of the house and ask Bokuto to play ball with them, sitting on a folding wooden chair. Kyoutani had been a bit more surly at first, but had soon joined the game much more awkwardly than he used to. Tsukishima, however, had turned out to be the surprise of the century by turning into a rather tame lycan.</p><p>Even his mother was stunned. He didn't pay as much attention to her as he did to Bokuto!</p><p>"Hey…" Tsukishima called after a while, when his friend had started to eat the delicious soup. Bokuto looked up from his spoon, licking his lips and feeling his tongue burn inside his mouth. "Has Akiteru told you how your knee is?"</p><p>Bokuto laughed. "Well, he told me it's broken."</p><p>Tsukishima let out a sigh, resting his chin on his hand and squinting in the opposite direction, knowing that the boy already knew what he meant. However, Bokuto continued with the sarcastic smirk on his face as he returned his attention to the soup.</p><p>"I mean, can you keep playing volleyball?"</p><p>Yes, he would like to know that answer too. He tilted his head back in a dejected look, abandoning the spoonful of soup he was about to put in his mouth and staring at the roof of the cabin as if it had the answer to every one of his problems. He wishes the mold stain in the corner was some kind of magical guru explaining exactly what he has to do in order to get his life back to normal.</p><p>"I don't know," he confessed. "When I ask him, he changes the subject, or suddenly he has an emergency."</p><p>Tsukishima nodded. That… That wasn't good news. He bit his lip, looking at his friend's sad countenance, feeling his own heart become smaller at the helplessness drawn on his face.</p><p>“Do you miss him?” He asked, perhaps like a fool, perhaps trying to help. Bokuto looked at him with another one of his goofy smiles.</p><p>“I miss a lot of things, Tsukki,” he laughed again. “Volleyball, my parents, running, Akaashi… Kuroo.”</p><p>The last name came to him with a pause of a few seconds in between. He had been wondering if it was a good idea to comment on his name because of how things were going. Given Tsukishima's reaction, the breeze of frozen air on that hot summer afternoon that made every hair on his skin stand on end, the blood that had flowed down from his face to settle in his heart and make it pump so fast that it probably, would shoot out of his chest like a damn cartoon, Bokuto thought that perhaps his mention hadn’t been one of his best suggestions.</p><p>However, Bokuto sighed.</p><p>“Don’t look at me like that. I know you know Kuroo isn’t like them…”</p><p>Tsukishima had also told him that Kuroo was part of the same bag as the three men who attacked them in the alley. Not only he, but all of Nekoma and other Tokyo schools such as Nohebi were also the fruit of the hunters' guild, teaching their students to conjugate verbs in the Past Simple while in the next class they learned to take out the heart to a werewolf. At first Bokuto didn't believe that his soul friend, his bro, one of his closest people was that kind of… That kind of being. When Akaashi confirmed it, his mentality changed a bit and, although he accepted that Kuroo had the hunter title next to his last name, he had refused to accept that he was as vile as his attackers.</p><p>“People hide secrets, Bokuto-san,” Tsukishima said. “Look at Akaashi-san, look at me… We hide who we are…”</p><p>“You don’t do it because you want to,” he complained again. “Damn, Tsukki, you know Kuroo better than I do. Do you really think it's like those people?”</p><p>He had no idea what he believed at this point. They could have spent the last two, three years talking about anything every day, staying to sleep in someone else's houses and sharing those little looks for which Bokuto and Akaashi would not stop bothering them, they could have done all that and still Tsukishima was not sure that if he confessed to Kuroo that he was a lycanthrope, he would not kill him.</p><p>And how was he going to check it? He had taken his time to erase from his head any incriminating evidence he was accused of during his first summer camp, so he simply could not go and tell him the truth in the belief that he would make it out of their encounter alive.</p><p>No. he didn’t know.</p><p>What annoyed him, enraged him and made him feel completely destroyed, because at some point in those three years his feelings for the man had evolved to the point that he hardly cared that he was able to murder him as long as he could continue by his side… It was pathetic. He was a pathetic suicidal lycan.</p><p>“Don’t worry,” Bokuto tried, almost reading his thoughts and noticing how sadness had taken hold of his friend. He pushed his tray aside as best he could, placing it securely between the cushions so it wouldn't tip over, and effortlessly ignored Tsukishima's complaints about not having finished his soup. Before he knew it, he drew the child towards his body, wrapping his strong arms around his neck and crushing him against his chest in a hug that although it had not been asked, was much more than needed.</p><p>It was ridiculous. It was Bokuto whose dreams of becoming a professional volleyball player had been spoiled. It was he who couldn't see people he loved most in the universe. It was he who was locked in the middle of the forest with a knee in a cast. Why was he comforting him? To Tsukishima, who had just been a silly little boy who had laid eyes on the wrong person. He didn't deserve that! The hugs were needed by Bokuto.</p><p>“Akaashi will come back and bring Kuroo with him, Tsukki. The four of us will hide here forever,” he murmured against the blonde hair, digging his nose into the curls that tickled him so much and tightening his grip on the youngest shoulders a little more. Tsukishima became embarrassed, hiding his face on Bokuto’s chest.</p><p>“It’s my mother’s house…”</p><p>“Your mom loves me, Tsukki, I love her. I don’t think she’ll care.” The two of them laughed. Tsukishima had gotten used to Bokuto hugging him every two by three in the time he had been taking care of him and, by now, he was more than willing to accept the boy's huge arms whenever he wanted. Although, of course, he wasn't going to say it out loud.</p><p>They stood there, in silence, breathing on top of each other as the scorching heat that had reigned during the day was forgotten outside. Their sweaty skins tangled with each other, and then Tsukishima opened his mouth.</p><p>"I can ask Yamaguchi to bring a volleyball and, well, give us a few passes from the chair."</p><p>Bokuto placed his hands on Tsukishima's shoulders and pushed him away so he would be able to look into his eyes. His face had suddenly lit up as much as the sun that had predominated in the morning and the line of his mouth was raised in a huge and very happy smile.</p><p>“Seriously, Tsukki?!”</p><p>Tsukishima rolled his eyes in mock annoyance and then pointed to the tray. “But you must eat first.”</p><p>Bokuto nodded effusively and allowed Tsukishima to return to his place, next to him, placing the tray back on his lap to finish the last few spoonfuls of soup he had left. He glanced at his friend, then tried his luck with fate.</p><p>“Would you transform for me?” He muttered. Tsukishima watched him with a suspicious grin, quite aware of how Bokuto was taking advantage of his trust and his position as a patient. He ended by letting out a sigh, raising the hand that was still on the backrest to gently stroke the hair on the back of Bokuto's neck in an unplanned movement.</p><p>“Maybe when we’re outside.”</p><p>Bokuto jumped up, spilling the soup whose ending had been more than written for a long time, thrilled at Tsukishima's assertion and grabbed him in his hands, leaning his head forward and planting a huge, loud kiss on the sweaty skin of his front.</p><p>“You’re the best, Tsukki!”</p><p>-</p><p>"Ah, Kei, you've never treated me like this!" Kuroo's pitiful whimper gets Bokuto to smile proudly, shrugging like someone who doesn't want it and winking at the camera.</p><p>Kuroo snorts, turning his lips into a sad pout that he directs towards his other two boyfriends, while one of his arms travels behind Tsukishima's back until it ends with the fingers tangled in Akaashi's hair, who had leaned on the shoulder of his boyfriend looking for a source of heat.</p><p>"My treatment was special because I was alone!" Bokuto explains. “The weekends became my favorites because it was when Kei came, the others were lonely and bored and more lonely and bored.”</p><p>The other three sigh. From the time he got up until he went to bed, Bokuto was surrounded by people during the months that he was recovering, whether it was Tsukishima's mother, Akiteru, Saeko, Tanaka, Kyoutani or even Yamaguchi, all concerned about his physical and mental health before the accident. However, they understand that what he is referring to is that he did not have any of his current boyfriends with him, which is what he would have liked.</p><p>"Okay yeah, Kyouken and Tadashi-kun visited me, but it wasn't the same!" He huffs at the gesture the people on the couch made. Akaashi, with his eyes half closed, raised a finger before wrapping his arms around Tsukishima's side.</p><p>“Saeko-san did too,” he remembers. Tsukishima hums an assent, remembering the woman's visits, and Bokuto opens his eyes.</p><p>“It 's true! She is very cool. Don't you think we should go visit her at the nursery? We haven't seen the kids for a long time,” Bokuto proposes, momentarily forgetting that they were supposed to be making a video and Kuroo nods his agreement.</p><p>“We have to go to Sendai in general, I also want to see Yamaguchi’s girls. Have you seen the pics? They are huge!”</p><p>Akaashi sighs that it would be nice to spend the following weekend with Tsukishima's family in Sendai, stay the night in the country cabin where they have so many memories, or visit Yamaguchi, Kyoutani, and Terushima at the farm where he was so long they did not go. Tsukishima also doesn't think it is a bad idea and wonders if they could make it coincide with his next full moon. He glances at the camera, noticing the red light flashing, not sure what that means.</p><p>“Now what part comes?” Tsukishima asks, knowing that if they started talking about Yamaguchi’s girls they would leave the story of their relationship completely abandoned, and now that they had thought about it, he wanted to remember what happened next.</p><p>Kuroo shrinks in his seat, then, and his hands are back on his stomach, traveling nervously to his knees, forgetting about the caresses he gave Akaashi.</p><p>“I’m going to need a beer for this,” he advises, getting up from the couch and walking around Bokuto to head to the kitchen. Bokuto winces, scolding his nose, and it’s Akaashi who answers the question.</p><p>“It’s my fight with Tetsu,” he reports. Tsukishima imitates with some exactness the face Bokuto had made and, leaning back, prepares to warn Kuroo.</p><p>“Better bring the wine!”</p><p>Kuroo is back in the living room with a bottle of wine in his hands and two glasses in the other. He would have brought more if, in fact, they had, but the four of them manage to break the glasses in the unsuccessful attempt to put them in the dishwasher. They decide to share them, at the end of the day, it is not as if at that point someone was scrupulous with the other's saliva.</p><p>“Okay, well, there’s a timeskip. Again. So it’s been a while. Kei and I were in Sendai while Keiji continued with college and, well, Tetsu was looking for the werewolf who had attacked those hunters.”</p><p>-</p><p>It had been a while, though it wasn't like he had been counting the days. He knew his semester exams had ended a couple of weeks ago, but he couldn’t remember exactly when he had done his last test. He was not concerned, he had focused on approving them and his grade, although it had not been far from the highest, at least it had been so decent that he wouldn’t have to repeat them. If he was honest, the only thing that mattered to him was the annoying hunters stop looking for the cursed lycan and be able to return to Sendai and meet Bokuto like so many nights he had dreamed.</p><p>Akaashi felt that each day they were getting closer to discovering that he was who killed those three boys. It was like a little voice that spoke to him when everything around him was silent and that repeated over and over again incessantly that the hunters would come for him when he closed his eyes. They would drive a silver dagger into his chest and open it in a channel to introduce stones into his stomach, as in the story of Little Red Riding Hood, throwing him into the river where his corpse would disappear drowned by fresh water.</p><p>Or perhaps they would immobilize him, hollow out his teeth with metal tweezers to prevent his jaws from coming out, remove his fingernails and cut off his fingers in a torture that would seem eternal while they asked him to confess where the rest of him was his manad.</p><p>His worst nightmares came from the hand of Bokuto and Tsukishima, whom the hunters would have caught, facing the same fate as Akaashi. The repetition of the wound on his boyfriend's leg would be visualized over and over again on his head, the bone piercing through the skin, the yellowish white surrounded by blood and muscle dangling at his sides. Tsukishima's death would be much slower than Bokuto's due to the hunters having a little more mercy on humans.</p><p>Bokuto would get a bullet stuck between eyebrows, probably from behind, and he would fall to his feet with his eyes still open. With Tsukishima they would be as fat as they would with him. They would attack his teeth, his claws and his ears. They would force him to transform to cut off the lips of his snout and keep his skin like a sadistic trophy. His coup de grace would be struck in the neck with one of those daggers, drawing a line across his throat much deeper than anticipated, allowing blood to gurgle and flood the floor like open prey, mixing with Bokuto's and with his own.</p><p>The worst of those nightmares was the end, when he raised his head and saw Kuroo as the only one responsible for what happened, holding the dagger in one hand and the pistol in another, watching from above with the same twisted smile as the hunter in the alley had granted him. He held the weapon to his forehead and the only thing Akaashi was able to see before the arms of death encircled him were his friend's long, shining golden eyes.</p><p>Akaashi, an almost twenty-years-old stressed and depressed college student, was barely able to sleep thinking that Kuroo, one of the people he loved the most, would end up murdering Tsukishima, Bokuto and him in the most horrifying way. Deep down he knew that his fear was unfounded, that none of this had to happen since in the end, Kuroo was his friend, not just any hunter. No? At least he made himself believe that was what he really believed.</p><p>His subconscious, the creator of his dreams, seemed to have a different opinion on the matter.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Akaashi-san!" Exclaimed the girl he shared a seat with in his literature class. She had dropped the books she would need to read for the next semester so abruptly on the table that Akaashi’s pens had been thrown at the front desk. She got up somewhat quickly from his chair and practically ran to where the utensils were to return them to her partner. He nodded, feigning a grateful smile as he asked her not to worry and that it was just an accident.</p><p>However, before he was able to finish the sentence, a very familiar smell caught his nostrils and completely flooded the cavity of his lungs. Hunters had always had that smell of death that was easily recognizable, disgusting, and repulsive like nothing else, but Akaashi had always been surprised that Kuroo had never smelled that way. He didn't discover that Kuroo was a hunter by the fragrance his body emitted, far from it, because he always smelled like freshly baked bread.</p><p>Being by his side was like walking into a bakery first thing in the morning when the sweets begin to come out of the fire, feeding through the fragrance as if it were corporeal, making his conscience drunk and making him doubt whether, really, the boy was or not a hunter.</p><p>Akaashi noticed him long before Kuroo poked his head out the door of his world literature class. His scent had reached him first, and then his hideous haircut made its presence felt before his eyes. They watched each other directly across the room and, perhaps due to the nightmares he had not stopped having, the dream he was missing, or the fact that the situation couldn't be clearer from his gaze, Akaashi knew that Kuroo had just found out that he was the werewolf with black fur and blue orbs.</p><p>Suddenly everything made sense inside his head. The death of the hunters, the disappearance of Bokuto or the estrangement of Akaashi were pieces that, in fact, were part of the same puzzle whose image he was now able to see. His friend, that boy whom he had known since his adolescence, with whom he had spent hundreds of things at his side, whom he had allowed to fall in love with his colleague, was the same monster who had murdered three young hunters.</p><p>The teacher walked into the class, walking past Kuroo without bothering to take a single glance, and commanded all the students to finish their chatter. Akaashi's deskmate had frowned, confused at the very interruption of his comment, and had been waiting for the man to pick up the thread of the conversation. However, Akaashi was too busy staring at Kuroo, debating between getting out there right now and finishing things once and for all, or waiting for his class to finish, feigning one last glimmer of humanity.</p><p>He turned his body on his seat then, ignoring Kuroo and paying attention to his teacher's new PowerPoint. Maybe it was better to hold on a little longer.</p><p>Akaashi left his class an hour later, saying goodbye with a smile to his classmate who took the girl by surprise, with his books well stored in his bag, heading out of the college in his usual way, as if he were not there being followed by a werewolf hunter who knew his secret. If Kuroo wanted to do that, he had better remain calm until he found a place where there were no people around him. If he wasn't mistaken there was a park nearby, maybe he could… He could transform there.</p><p>He knew what would happen. It was obvious. He had been postponing the situation for a long time, but it was as inevitable as night swallowing up day. Perhaps it had happened much earlier than Akaashi had anticipated, or in a somewhat more complicated way than his mind could have imagined, but here they were, just steps away from a life-and-death fight with one of his closest friends.</p><p>Fate must be laughing at them. How stupid could they be?</p><p>Akaashi arrived at the site he had planned and, closing his eyes for a second in which he concentrated on the breaths that were in that desolate park, making sure that Kuroo and he were indeed the only people in the area. Then he turned around with the intention of facing his friend, who he knew had been chasing him, but was surprised to see no one waiting for him with a dagger in hand. Had he hidden? Was he planning a surprise attack?</p><p>It wasn't like it could surprise him too much.</p><p>"You followed me here by yourself, don't you think that's something pretty reckless?" Akaashi asked, dropping his bag on the ground and shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. Silence swallowed his question, chewed it up, and spat it out in the form of a metallic snap that Akaashi recognized from his very nightmares. Kuroo's nervous breath came out as he wielded a gray gun much like the one from the alley hunter. It was aimed at his face, and given the distance, pulling the trigger would be a rookie mistake.</p><p>There was no Bokuto present to hold Akaashi back from what he could or couldn't do.</p><p>"I trust my abilities," Kuroo replied then, sounding angrier than Akaashi would have thought. His grip on the weapon was strong and taut, not hesitant, but his heart was beating abnormally fast and the werewolf was able to feel it. "Where is Bokuto?"</p><p>Akaashi frowned.</p><p>“He 's fine.”</p><p>“Fine my balls!” Kuroo yelled as he waved the gun, making Akaashi clench his fist feeling threatened, enraged to the core. He had concealed from him that he was a lycanthrope, he had played with him like a cat plays with a mouse before devouring him in one bite, and now that he had found out all the fun was over.It was dinner time and Kuroo wasn't going to let it become the main dish, nor was Bokuto the dessert. “There was blood from a fourth person in the alley, Akaashi! I don’t know if you remember it, but right next to the fucking massacre you left!</p><p>Was he accusing him of having done something wrong to Bokuto? He couldn't believe it! His ilk were the real wild animals in the whole equation, the bad guys, the ones who did harm for sheer entertainment. He had done what he did for the sole purpose of defending his boyfriend. He… He… He wasn't the killer everyone said he was.</p><p>"You have no idea what happened, Kuroo," Akaashi tried to explain. The hunter, however, was not going to give him the opportunity to do it.</p><p>"What I know is that you're a fucking monster, Akaashi," he interrupted, taking a couple more steps closer, narrowing the distance between their bodies.</p><p>Kuroo wanted to scream, he wanted to cry and he wanted to start punching the tree next to him, but he needed to unload all the stress that was causing him just by looking at Akaashi's pretty face and realizing he was a bloody sadistic predator. He had been raised to exterminate that type of being and his time had come, the time to kill his friend was now, he would have to finish him. How had he been able to do something like that to him? He loves Akaashi!</p><p>"I don't want to hurt you," Akaashi sought, pulling his hands out of his pocket little by little. He didn't want to argue, he didn't want to fight, he didn't want to kill Kuroo, but he was pretty sure that the hunter would pounce on him at any moment with the sole intention of stopping his heartbeat.</p><p>“Is too fucking late to show humanity.”</p><p>Kuroo didn't hesitate to pull the trigger. The bullet traveled at full speed to Akaashi's forehead, but him, who had already seen it coming, jumped away from its trajectory allowing it to be lost in the vastness of the bushes. Akaashi fell to his feet a couple of meters to his right, holding onto the ground with his fingers as he shot Kuroo a glare filled with fury. He had dared to shoot. He really had.</p><p>The bullets began to come out of the barrel one after another heading towards Akaashi, who had started a race towards Kuroo while dodging them with worthy precision. One of them managed to collide with his shoulder, then, ripping his coat and further annoying, if possible, the werewolf. Akaashi wasted no time complaining about the matter, but kept running until he was close enough to Kuroo that, in one leap, the figure of his great wolf fell on him.</p><p>The hunter used his legs, once his back hit the ground, to push the werewolf with the enormous jaws that were growling over his face. He threw it back and hurried to pull out the dagger that was tucked into his pants belt, standing up and waiting patiently for Akaashi to approach him.</p><p>Akaashi stood on two legs, his massive claws couldn't be compared to even the sharpest knife on the planet, gleaming in the afternoon sun as he wiggled his fingers in warning. Kuroo stood in front of him, waiting patiently and holding the dagger in his right hand, watching the wolf with a host of feelings that ranged from the deepest anger to the most sincere disappointment.</p><p>“Where is Bokuto?!” He screamed again.</p><p>The wolf growled, lost in his own anger, and threw himself at Kuroo in a new leap. Now the hunter was waiting for him with the silver blade, which had always been his specialty, and managed to shake it off with a slight cut in the area of his shoulder. Akaashi barked, reaching for his wrist and gritting his teeth around the circumference of it, not digging in his fangs, much less biting into the piece of meat. He could do so many things, he could end him right then and there.</p><p>Kuroo's screech was his only warning before the dagger came close to his muzzle hard enough to make a new cut now on his lip. Akaashi raised his head in pain, pushing Kuroo back with a swipe of his claws that fell squarely on his eye, lifting the skin near his brow. The wolf approached the hunter, cornering him under his massive body, with each of his paws on the side of his head.</p><p>“I told you. Bokuto is safe,” Akaashi growled. Kuroo struggled beneath him, dagger blade in one hand as he tried to stab his face. The wolf's huge hand tangled around his wrist, clenching on the teeth mark he had left, causing Kuroo to scream again.</p><p>“He can’t be safe if you are by his side! You are a fucking savage, capable of killing him just like you did with those three kiddos. They had family!” Kuroo continued to exclaim like a true madman, his voice coming out from deep in his throat in the form of screams that were swallowed up by the trees in which they had hidden, anger gurgling from his mouth like white foam. “They were children of mothers and you didn’t even leave a face to recognize them!”</p><p>Akaashi's bark silenced Kuroo. He didn't want to hear anything Kuroo had to say. His fangs approached the hunter's face dangerously, watching defiantly as he yelled back with a terrifying guttural sound that would have made anyone start praying for his life. It was also not a good idea to anger a werewolf the way Kuroo was doing it.</p><p>“Koutarou is my family too,” he said, then, tightening his hand on the hunter's wrist, threatening to be his last words before devouring him. Kuroo wasn't going to allow it. “And they hurt him!”</p><p>Kuroo, with his unoccupied hand, grabbed in a desperate act the knife that he had left lying in the dry earth and stabbed it into the lycanthrope's side, causing Akaashi to howl completely in pain, backing up on his legs to get away from the hunter and avoid another wound of such size. The wolf stared at his stomach, the dagger blade protruding from his furry body, and with his paws pulled it from him in a weary gasp. His eyes traveled to Kuroo, who had crawled over to a rock and was trying to stand up, his gaze embedding in the blood that soaked the wolf.</p><p>“Bokuto is normal and we don’t harm humans, Akaashi. We are not you.”</p><p>Akaashi clenched his wound, groaning at it, and took one last look at Kuroo. The boy couldn't be serious, couldn't have that thought in his head, couldn't blame him for what had happened, because he hadn't done anything. No. No. He wasn't the bad guy in the story, he was a victim. And, hell, Akaashi was sure that in the back of his head, Kuroo was also thinking the same thing. Maybe. Please, hopefully.</p><p>“Do you believe what you’re saying?”</p><p>Kuroo didn't answer him, swallowing hard as he ran the back of his hand over the blood running down his head, sure that the blow the wolf had given him on the face would leave a blatant mark on him. He looked at Akaashi one last time. He was very badly injured, blood was running through his body and Kuroo didn't know where he would go now, if he would look for Bokuto or die on the way.</p><p>Before he could say anything more, Akaashi fell to his all fours, turning into an even bigger and hairier wolf, and disappeared into the trees of the park they had gone to. The hunter stared at the bloody dagger.</p><p>What had he done?</p><p>-</p><p>"So that's how Tetsu found out that Keiji was a werewolf," Bokuto laughs, without any grace in his tone of voice, continuing to stare at the camera lens. He lets out a sigh, trying to calm the high rhythm of his heart, the one that always gets altered when this part of the story comes to light.</p><p>The first few times he told the story, to Terushima, for example, he had barely been able to relate that event. He had allowed Akaashi to continue recounting how they had managed to come together, seeing it impossible for the words to come out of his mouth, even with the memory of a dying Akaashi in his head. He runs his hands over his face and fixes on Kuroo, who continues to stare at the coffee table, his second glass of wine in one hand.</p><p>“I’m sorry”</p><p>Kuroo raises his head, his glass and shakes his chin: "It doesn't matter, it's fine, I know what I did."</p><p>Tsukishima leans forward, slightly flattening Akaashi's legs against his chest, and rests one of his elbows on his knee while with his free hand he caresses his boyfriend's thigh again, just as he had been doing all afternoon. Kuroo was always blaming himself, hating himself, and distrusting what his own mind could put him through. Akaashi leans back, then, catching the older's sad eyes.</p><p>"In a fair fight, I would have beaten you," he murmurs, making the man laugh.</p><p>"In a fair fight you wouldn't be a fucking werewolf, my love."</p><p>Bokuto and Tsukishima share a calm look. Yes, the truth is that Kuroo has a good point.</p><p>Still, Akaashi is right. He is the strongest of the four, the smartest and the one who has trained the longest. If he really wanted to, he could take down each one of them in less than a rooster crow. Bokuto raises his hand, less excited, to grab Kuroo's cup and drink the remaining content, needed before the part he was about to tell. Tsukishima notices it and frowns.</p><p>"I can continue," he says. Bokuto shakes his head, although deep down he's dying for Tsukishima to take his place as storyteller, but not wanting to push too hard. It's clear that everyone didn't want to shoot that video as much as he did and now that he had started it, he didn't want to be the coward who left it halfway looking impossible to continue.</p><p>However, Tsukishima has always been much kinder and more sympathetic to Bokuto than the rest, allowing him to play with him in every possible way. So let out a sigh and look at the camera.</p><p>“Let’s see, we were in Keiji bleeding out, right?”</p><p>"Kei! That isn’t necessary.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter, Kou,” Tsukishima pauses. “Well, the same day, I was still keeping Kou company at my mom’s house. And Keiji, well, he was hurt…”</p><p>-</p><p>The forest surrounding the Tsukishima home was immense. Bokuto could observe it from the backyard of the cabin and feel that the trees were infinite, that the greenish crowns that mixed with each other repeated over and over again as if at some point Mother Nature had simply dedicated herself to make a copy and paste. He used to tell Tsukishima that they were like the stars, once he began to number them to the slightest carelessness he would get him to lose count and that, suddenly, where there were two, now there are four. It never exceeded one hundred and twenty-four trees with thick and long trunks and deciduous leaves, whose passage of time was visible.</p><p>Autumn was just around the corner and Bokuto was not happy with the idea. Although he thought that this would make it much easier to guess the exact number of trees he could see from the hill, he did not get out of his mind that he had spent months locked up in that house watching how the same leaves of those happy trees lived and died.</p><p>It was fine, he wouldn’t lie to say that Tsukishima's family had treated him as one of them, without leaving a day in which any of them did not visit him, bring him food or entertain him by playing with the ball. Tsukishima stayed with him from Friday to Sunday, glued to his shadow as if it were actually one, and sleeping in the same room almost afraid that he would not be there the next day. The last day of the weekend was reserved for lunch with everyone else, gathering around the outside table of the cabin on hotter days for a good outdoors barbecue.</p><p>Bokuto wasn't going to complain about how well he had been treated. Akiteru had been bringing a physical therapy student with him since he removed the cast, so his knee wasn't as bad as it could have been either, although everyone insisted that if he wanted to go to a real hospital, no one was going to stop him.</p><p>It was clear that the vet had already done everything in his power to get Bokuto to regain full mobility in his leg, but there were certain kinds of things that were out of his reach. However, the man had refused to leave the cabin.</p><p>He was a little scared. He still hadn't seen Akaashi since the accident and the video calls were beginning to seem insufficient - they had never been fully competent, to tell the truth. He was scared that his boyfriend was going through something much tougher in Tokyo and not being able to be by his side was killing him.</p><p>Tsukishima told him that the situation was much more under control, that it was a matter of days before the lycanthrope appeared in Sendai with open arms, willing to never be separated from him again and that, therefore, he had nothing to worry about.</p><p>But he knew that Tsukishima was just as scared as he was.</p><p>So Bokuto, a not-as-healthy-as-he-could-be young man in his twenties, counted the same trees in a forest to avoid thinking about all the problems in his life. Unfortunately, Akaashi and Tsukishima were not the only people who worried him, because there was Kuroo… He had stopped responding to messages and calls and was unable to make any more excuses. It hurt like no one else, but what else could he do? Bokuto had no choice.</p><p>All he had to do was wait, wait for Akaashi and maybe, hopefully, for him to bring Kuroo too. Waiting sitting on the same couch every day, waiting learning to use crutches, waiting lying in the same way that they were now on a sheet on the lawn in the backyard of the cabin. To wait huddled and half asleep against Tsukishima's abnormally soft fur under the hot sun of that Friday afternoon when the lycanthrope had escaped from class so he could spend another day with Bokuto.</p><p>He told him that it was because they were not going to give any important class and that the training had been canceled, but the message that reached him on his own mobile from Yamaguchi asking if Tsukishima was with him gave him to understand that, in fact, Tsukishima had lied to him.</p><p>Yes, maybe the boy was even more scared than he was.</p><p>It was a relief that Tsukishima was there, because he was sure that he would not have been able to control the situation if only he had been on his crutches.</p><p>The peaceful afternoon that was approaching them was abruptly interrupted when the wolf raised its head, which it held between its paws on the side of Bokuto's hip, in such a hurry that it managed to wake the older man from his light sleep.</p><p>"What's wrong, Tsukki?" He yawned, sitting up as soon as Tsukishima got up on all fours, rising like a majestic mahogany figure. Bokuto continued to be impressed by how huge the wolf was, feeling that its head was almost as big as its back, not believing that beings as splendid as them were being killed as if it were a slaughterhouse.</p><p>Tsukishima didn't answer, though it wasn't like he could either. Bokuto had learned many things about lycanthropes during all that time that he hadn't had anything better to do, discovering one of the old diaries of a little pre-adolescent wolf that recounted how he had hunted his first bird, or even how he had confessed to his best friend the nature he was hiding even though his mother had insisted on keeping it hidden.</p><p>Among those things was the fact that in the third form of transformation of a wolf, the one in which they walk on all fours legs and the fact that, well, they are wolves, they could not communicate through language becomes unmistakable.</p><p>In the blink of an eye, the boy had run into the forest without waiting a single second for any reaction from Bokuto. He got up without understanding what was happening, barely grasping the crutches that rested on one side of the savannah, wondering what it was between the trees that had managed to alter his friend in this way.</p><p>The answer came alone when after a few minutes from the bushes Tsukishima's blond head came out, his naked and muddy body carrying another person with great care, approaching the door of the cabin under the attentive and horrified eyes of Bokuto.</p><p>“Call Akiteru!” Tsukishima yelled at him, almost sounding like a distant echo in the middle of the mountain, barely aware that it was him he was speaking to. He couldn't take his gaze off Akaashi's dying body that was being dragged into the house, half unconscious and bloody, barely keeping up with the minor as much as possible. “Call him, Bokuto!”</p><p>Bokuto jumped into place and began desperately searching for the phone that he knew he had to have in his pockets. He dialed the number for the vet.</p><p>Tsukishima was sitting on the sofa in the cabin, his gaze fixed on the glass of water that Akiteru had left for him on the coffee table. He was watching him so intensely that at any moment the glass would shatter, intimidated, into a thousand pieces. His older brother had been gone less than an hour ago, having appeared as soon as possible after the pointless call that Bokuto had managed to make, who in a panic had barely been able to inform him of a large wound to the stomach of Akaashi, who had come out of nowhere.</p><p>It hadn't been anything serious, at least nothing they weren't used to, since Akiteru used to receive lycanthropes who had been attacked by one of the hunter's daggers far more frequently than he would like to admit. Yes, he had lost a lot of blood and still did not understand how he had managed to travel the entire distance from Tokyo to Sendai without having died on the way. Akaashi was undoubtedly one of the strongest wolves he had ever met.</p><p>Which made him wonder who the hell had managed to attack him like that when he was such a powerful being. He thought about it while he saw the intact liquid in his glass of water, with his elbows on his knees and with the answer on the tip of his tongue without having any desire to say it.</p><p>Tsukishima was not an idiot and Akaashi reeked from head to toe of Kuroo, the unmistakable smell of freshly baked bread had been a delicacy that he had learned to live with over the years.</p><p>Akiteru hadn't asked questions about it. He had finished his work, left some medicine, and left with the promise that he would return the next morning to check on his condition. Tsukishima swore he'd said he'd bring his mother with him, but he hadn't paid much attention to him. His mind was on Kuroo.</p><p>On Kuroo and how he had stabbed Akaashi.</p><p>He couldn't believe all of this was happening. It was as if his worst nightmare had come true, and his arm was starting to burn from the hundreds of times he had peeled himself with the stupid attempt to wake up in the bed in Kuroo's apartment, his other three friends tangled with each other and the DVD of the Christmas movie on duty still playing on the TV. He would give anything to go back to that day that hadn't been as long as he felt.</p><p>"I hear you thinking from up stairs."</p><p>Akaashi's voice alerted Tsukishima, who interrupted his own dispute with the glass of water to approach the stairs that the other one was descending, frowning without understanding what he was doing awake at that hour.</p><p>"You need to rest, Akaashi-san," he scolded, still accepting the hand that the boy offered to help him jump the last steps. "You can't move too much."</p><p>Akaashi shook his head, shrugging under the oversized sweatshirt he had borrowed from Bokuto, and walking over to the couch with a vague warning not to raise his voice.</p><p>“Bokuto-san just fell asleep. Don’t be noisy,” he complained, sitting cross-footed on the cushions as if until a couple of hours ago he hadn’t found himself within a breath of the arms of death. Tsukishima took a quick look up the stairs, grateful that Bokuto's nerves had calmed down enough that he was able to sleep. “I wanted to talk with you.”</p><p>Tsukishima snorted, knowing that what Akaashi was going to tell him was not going to be any good news, and he cupped the cushions that the boy had around him so that his position was much more comfortable. He asked if he needed anything else, if he wanted the glass of water that he had not touched and that, had it not been for his interruption, would have thrown against the wall, but Akaashi shook his head again as he fumbled on the empty seat beside him. He reluctantly agreed, noticing how he had started to play with his fingers, somewhat nervous.</p><p>"You don't have to say it," he told Akaashi, interrupting whatever channel of thought was bothering him. "You smell like him."</p><p>They fell silent. They looked into each other's eyes and it was as if they were able to carry on a conversation with just these. It was as if Akaashi was transmitting all the emotions that had dominated him in his encounter with Kuroo, anger and sadness, disappointment and frustration, realizing that each of the ideas he had about the hunter were true. That he was one of them and that he always would be. That he didn't care at all that they were his friends. That if he had to kill them, they would.</p><p>The tears fell rather quickly, drenching Akaashi's cheeks without being able to hold back the feelings he had been building up in his chest during all those months of loneliness and fear, as he lunged towards Tsukishima and wrapped his arms around his neck, pulling him towards him in one of those hugs he was already more than used to. The blonde grabbed Akaashi’s nape and pressed him against his neck, killing the sobs that came from his throat with his skin, drenching his shirt with salty water and disgusting snot.</p><p>“He hates me. He hates us. He says we are monsters…” He continued crying. Tsukishima ignored the noise of the wood thundering in the hallway, smelling of Bokuto who would not be further from the stairs, listening to the conversation from the safety of the upper floor. “He thinks I’ve done something to Koutarou. That I’m hurting him.”</p><p>Tsukishima ordered him to shut up gently, with his other hand caressing his back in an encouraging note, and lowering the tone of his voice so that Bokuto would not fully hear the talk they were having. It didn't make sense that everyone was worried about the same stupid reason, right?</p><p>“Akaashi-san, you are protecting him. You’ve done all of this to prevent them from hurting Bokuto-san,” Tsukishima reminded him, muttering with his lips too pressed to his earlobe. “Kuroo is hurt and that’s why he said this, but he knows that you would never allow something bad to happen to him.”</p><p>"But he's here because of me, Kei," Akaashi whimpered, his fists digging into Tsukishima's chest in a complete act of desperation. Bokuto was able to perfectly hear what was happening downstairs, tensing as the words began to make sense inside his head, assuming for sure who the person they were talking about was. "I did that to him and now Kuroo wants us dead."</p><p>Tsukishima pulled Akaashi away from his body, bringing his hands up to his cheeks and wiping away the tears that marred the beautiful and flawless face he was used to seeing with his thumbs. The stitches on the wound on his lip must have sting from the salty water and he wondered if it would hurt as much as it looked like it did. He supposed that there was no physical damage compared to the pain in his heart.</p><p>“It wasn’t your fault, Akaashi. Neither of what happened,” he whispered. “You don’t have to blame yourself for anything.”</p><p>They embraced again. Tsukishima allowed Akaashi to cry until he was dry, let Bokuto continue with his heart to a thousand sitting on the first steps of the staircase and allowed his brain to form a thousand and one question about what had crossed Kuroo's head when he found the truth. Had he just accepted that Akaashi was an enemy?</p><p>He had thought about it? Had he thrown himself at his neck at the slightest opportunity presented itself? Had he attacked him by surprise and forced his fangs out? Had he tried to dialogue? Had he tried asking what had happened?</p><p>Tsukishima stroked Akaashi's hair as he tried to erase the idea that had settled in him about traveling to Tokyo and seeing Kuroo in person. It was a suicide, the city was dangerous now that Akaashi's family was known to be related to the lycanthropes, his entire pack would have become the target by then if the hunter had informed his superiors. Would Kuroo have sold him in that dirty way?</p><p>“Do you want to go to sleep?” Akaashi asked, sniffing and feeling a little better now that he had released all that emotional charge. He pulled away from Tsukishima a bit so he could stand up, without taking his eyes off him. "The bed is big enough for the three of us and I need you with me."</p><p>The blonde's cheeks turn red, but he nods anyway, looking impossible to deny the request. It wasn't like he hadn't been sleeping next to Bokuto all that time ago, anyway. They again ignored the thunderous sound that was heard upstairs, probably coming from a Bokuto who had gotten up too quickly and was limping back into the room before being caught.</p><p>The two wolves lay down on either side of the Bokuto who was pretending to sleep, cornering him with the warm blood from their bodies, as they settled between the pillows and the sheets. Akaashi ran a hand over Bokuto's hip, groping for Tsukishima's trunk to be able to touch something of it, and the blonde brought his arm closer, intertwining their fingers.</p><p>“Are you alright?” Akaashi murmured against Bokuto's neck, his eyes closed and the tip of his nose nailed to the throat of his boyfriend, whom he had missed so much that he even felt he had forgotten his essence. Tsukishima sighed.</p><p>“I am, “Akaashi didn't seem convinced. He was not talking about the situation in general, he was not talking about his condition, he was not talking about what had happened. He was talking about Kuroo and Tsukishima was aware of it. “I already knew it was impossible. It’s just that I had a little hope, but I’m fine.”</p><p>Akaashi squeezed even closer to Bokuto, shaking the blonde's hand tighter.</p><p>"I'm beginning to think there's no hope for us, Kei," he confessed. Bokuto opened his eyes in the darkness of the night, barely staring at the ceiling of the room he knew so well, a growing annoyance nailed to his chest. "To him… We are monsters."</p><p>-</p><p>Kuroo drinks from his glass with his gaze fixed on the camera lens. Akaashi has become increasingly entangled in Tsukishima's arm and with his eyelids half closed it seems that at any moment he will be able to fall asleep, although everyone is sure that he would not. Bokuto is nervous, well, the truth is that in his mind the idea of recording himself telling the story sounded much more promising than it actually is. He shakes his head convinced that at the end of the day all that suffering will be worth it, just as it had happened with their relationship!</p><p>"It's kind of nice that you loved me so much," Kuroo says, not looking at anyone in particular but speaking to only Tsukishima. Yes, the story had sounded a bit different now that it was the blond himself who blurted out everything he thought at the time. The details that Akaashi already knew are new to Kuroo, which makes him feel a little better about his role. "Even after all."</p><p>Tsukishima leans his back on the couch, shrugging like someone who doesn't want the thing and trying to put on his best bored face, pretending that what he's going to say is nothing to write home about.</p><p>"Not that I like the idea," he admits, scolding his nose, "but I confess that you can do whatever you want, that I'll never stop feeling that way about it."</p><p>"Kei!" Kuroo whimpers on the verge of really bursting into tears. Tsukishima dodges the hug as best he can and takes refuge in Akaashi so that his boyfriend could not reach him. Kuroo puffs up his cheeks like a little boy and makes sure that later, perhaps behind the scenes, he will get his long-awaited hug.</p><p>"It's the worst part of the story, when we didn't understand each other and stuff," Bokuto says. His brow furrows, but a contented smile appears on his face. "But we made it here!"</p><p>The other three agree again. Kuroo finishes the contents of his glass in one gulp and hands the empty glass to Tsukishima, to raise his hands and attract the attention of all his boyfriends.</p><p>“Good! It's my turn to tell this part, and what is coming is something that I simply will not be able to forget in my life,” he announces, raising his eyebrows trying to add a comic touch to the sad scene that lies ahead. Bokuto pouts, not liking what is coming next. "It happened a couple of days after my fight with Keiji, when they made sure that I had not, in fact, blurted out that he was a werewolf."</p><p>-</p><p>The message reached his phone on Sunday night. His cell phone vibrated next to the sink, prudently distanced from the bottles of alcohol and hydrogen peroxide with which he was cleaning the wound on his eyebrow, after weeks of ignoring his calls. He had noticed out of the corner of his eye how the text illuminated his newly lit screen, the boy's name next to an endless number of emoticons that interspersed hearts and owls, and he was forced to pause his arduous task to read it as many times as necessary until his brain will believe it. He did not care at all that the stitches he had sewn himself had skipped a second time, he ignored the blood that was still running down his cheek and dripped onto the sink, and he overlooked the fact that, perhaps he must have gone to his sister's house.</p><p>It was clear that anyone else would have sutured the wound better, but he was sure that the girl would not let him go until he had confessed how it had ended up that way, and he was not sure if he would be able to admit that it was Akaashi.</p><p>The same Akaashi who until a couple of days ago considered his friend, his confidant, a part of his own body.</p><p>His sister would have pushed him hard enough to get his name out of her lips, to accuse his former volleyball colleague's family of lycanthropy, to start a fight he didn't want to participate in. He preferred to fend for himself, he only had a couple of superficial wounds anyway.</p><p>The most serious was that of his eyebrow, which had been deep enough to need stitches - the same ones that kept coming out every two by three - and which would cause a large scar that in any other situation he would show off with pride. Marks of war and stuff. Then he had the one on his wrist, Akaashi's teeth plastered on his skin with a precision that would disappear as time passed, and also, the thousands of bruises that were proudly displayed in all corners of his body.</p><p>He was pretty sure his scratches were nothing compared to how Akaashi should be. He knew that one of his silver bullets had grazed his shoulder, so he would have to have the metal chafing on him as if he had been marked as an animal in slaughter. There was the cut on his bicep, the one that he hadn't pierced as much as he would have thought, but whose dandruff would stay nagging for a couple of weeks. He also remembered cutting off his snout and kept wondering what his human face would look like, which he forgot as soon as the memory of his dagger sinking into the wolf's side came back to his mind, and then the only thing he could the thought was whether Akaashi was still alive.</p><p>Kuroo didn't know anything about him and it wasn't like he had any way of contacting him either. He wasn't even sure if he had the right to do it. It was assumed that if Akaashi had stopped breathing in that world he lived in, it would all be over, right? The monstrous lycanthrope would have paid for the three deaths he had taken with him. He should be happy, grateful, he should go out and celebrate with his sister and his fellow guild that had killed the animal.</p><p>However, Kuroo, a mentally unstable young man in his early twenties, was far from being happy about Akaashi's supposed death. It terrified him to think that he had, in fact, killed his friend. To his friend's liar. Who had Bokuto hidden from. Who he had known since adolescence. With whom he had laughed a thousand times. Who he loved as much as himself. It was as if all the memories he had with the boy by his side had ceased to mean something... But in turn they were everything.</p><p>By now his mind was in complete chaos. Killing Akaashi was reasonable! Why the hell did he feel so bad about it? Fuck, he had no idea what to think.</p><p>And when he was on the edge of the abyss, or confessing to Kenma everything that had happened to him, knowing that his best friend was not interested enough in the world of hunters to take it seriously, Bokuto's message reached his telephone. It should have reassured him. He should have been relieved by the fact that the man showed signs of life after weeks in which he had completely ignored him, terror in his throat at the thought that - now the discovered Akaashi - had done something to him. However, all it did was make him even more nervous.</p><p>Bokubro 🦉🦉❤🦉❤🦉❤❤: KUROOO!!! See u at the coffee shop in the center that is next to the gym 2morrow???? the one with the strawberry cake on the menu!!! about 4 or so, okay???? akaashi has already told me that u are worried!!!</p><p>Akaashi was alive. Akaashi was alive and he had tried to kill him. And Bokuto knew it.</p><p>Kuroo spent the whole day almost climbing the walls without stopping to think about what had happened. He kept repeating to himself that the only savage there was the wolf, that he hadn't done anything wrong, that his friendship with Akaashi had been broken the second their eyes met at that fucking university. The words moved empty from one side to the other inside his mind and they began to know little. His theory ceased to be sustained within seconds and he began to believe that perhaps he was not entirely right.</p><p>Had he made a mistake? Again?</p><p>The worst thing was not being able to talk to anyone about it. He wasn't sure about confessing to Kenma that Akaashi was a werewolf, that he had been the one who had killed the three hunters from a couple of months ago, and that he had been holding Bokuto for that long.</p><p>Then there was the matter of Tsukishima, who had erased his existence from the map since the week he was supposed to go to Tokyo for his summer camp. They had been talking for so long about that date, that they would stop by the academy and that they would escape from the teachers with the help of Yamaguchi to spend the night in his apartment. It was nothing to write home about, they used to do it every time Tsukishima had to travel to Tokyo for a game or training camp, except that most of the time they did it together with Bokuto and Akaashi.</p><p>Where the hell had he gone too?</p><p>He jumped up from the wooden chair, sitting at one of the few tables he had been able to free himself in the middle of the coffee shop, when he saw Bokuto walk through the door. Kuroo believed that he had never been so relieved to see him, with his spiky hair and his huge round eyes, his broad back or his big biceps, or with the pleasant, sweet scent that had always flooded his skin. The one that reminded him so much of Akaashi and that made it impossible for him to forget that he had had a werewolf sleeping in his bed.</p><p>Bokuto's gaze fell on him, noticing him after taking a quick glance around the room, and his eyebrows shot up. He began to walk towards Kuroo, backing away from the door and showing the crutches with which by now he considered himself an expert. The hunter frowned, feeling annoyed, wondering if Akaashi had been the person to do that. He knew it! He had said it! No one would ever be safe with something like that by their side!</p><p>Kuroo had focused so much on the crutches, on how they moved with stellar precision in the tiny hallway, that he barely noticed that Bokuto had left one leaning on the unoccupied chair to free his hand. In less than the blink of an eye, the man's punch had landed on the hunter's cheek with force worthy of a semi-professional volleyball player. Kuroo fell to the ground without expecting the gesture, bringing his own palm to the hit area with wide eyes, as surprised as the waiter who had approached.</p><p>Nobody said anything, almost as if they knew that the fault of the fight had been the one who had received the punch, assuming it like that since they did not see entirely reasonable to throw out of the cafeteria who had the limp. Furthermore, Bokuto raised his hand in the direction of his friend to help him up from the cold floor. Kuroo scolded his nose, anticipating that that afternoon he would be forced to sew up the damn wound on his forehead again, and accepted Bokuto's impulse. Once they were at the same height, still the talk of the store, but not caring in the least what gazes were embedded in them, they hugged.</p><p>Kuroo hid his face in Bokuto's neck. It reeked of Akaashi and he was forced to swallow the ball of nerves that had stuck in his throat.</p><p>"I've missed you," he whispered. Bokuto pulled the fabric of the jacket over the hunter's back, digging his forehead into Kuroo body and nodding slightly.</p><p>“Me too.”</p><p>The two men sat across from each other and just as quickly as they did the waiter came over to take their order. He frowned at them, questioning their actions and had no qualms about asking if Kuroo needed an ice pack to appease the swelling on his face. He refused, asking for his own drink, while Bokuto gestured for him to come closer and, as if his request were a secret, told him what he wanted without Kuroo being able to hear him. The waiter nodded and wrote down whatever he had asked for.</p><p>“What’s the matter with this?” Kuroo asked when they were alone. He had pointed to his face to be a bit more specific, placing his elbows on the table and enjoying Bokuto's presence. It had been so long that he couldn’t see his bro that it was almost inhuman, for what they were used to, at least. Bokuto smiled at him, mimicking his position and leaning forward.</p><p>"You stabbed Akaashi."</p><p>Kuroo widened his eyes in surprise. So he did know ... Well, it wasn't as if anything else was expected. If he hadn't misunderstood his message, Bokuto was there because Akaashi had told him about their fight. About how concerned he was about his health, about whether he even lived. Likewise, hearing him that way, with the pleasant voice of his colleague intoning such a sour comment made his hair stand on end.</p><p>"I still have others for when I can stand on my feet without this thing," Bokuto continued, laughing sheepishly and gesturing with his thumb at the crutches resting on the side. Kuroo wasn't entirely sure if he really wanted to ask about what had happened to him. Was he right and had it been Akaashi? Or... had it been something else?</p><p>“Where have you been?” Kuroo dodged with the false belief that they might touch the point of his knee later. Bokuto smiled almost as if he had predicted that Kuroo was indeed not going to ask about the accident. The way the corners of his mouth turned up in disappointment made Kuroo wince, not feeling like he was talking to the same Bokuto from his teens.</p><p>“Hidden.”</p><p>Kuroo clicked his tongue.</p><p>“Where?”</p><p>"It's a secret," Bokuto complained, watching as the waiter handed Kuroo his cup of coffee, while apologizing to him that his order would take a little longer. He told him that nothing was wrong and resumed the conversation when he left. "But I've had two nice nurses who have been taking care of me all these days."</p><p>The hunter sighed, opening his packet of sugar and pouring the contents into the glass. At least Bokuto had been in a hospital, which was extremely comforting to the vision replaying in his head of his morbid body abandoned in a neglected shed. However, the man continued speaking.</p><p>"Well, after you stabbed Akaashi," he repeated, emphasizing the sentence because it was one of the main reasons he was there, in the flesh, in front of his friend. His cheerful expression was a bit twisted as his tone of voice changed, more scathing and violent, something never seen in him. Bokuto was all rainbows on rainy days and the person in front of Kuroo was like an earthquake before a tidal wave. "What I'm never going to forgive you for." The hunter gagged. How had the environment changed so much in a matter of seconds? "We only had one nurse left, but he still did a good job. He promised that he would dress up as a sexy nurse next time.”</p><p>Kuroo blinked in confusion. There was something that told him that, in fact, Bokuto had not been to a hospital. Not in anything like that. He was going to ask what he meant, but his friend went ahead to continue his monologue.</p><p>"We think Tsukki agreed because we don't expect there to actually be a next time."</p><p>His throat went dry at the mention of Tsukishima's name. That could not be happening, that was not going to allow it. He had to mishear, actually Bokuto hadn't blurted out that happy word, no, Tsukishima wasn't involved in all that paraphernalia. He was busy with his third year, with his volleyball games and his college entrance exams, he hadn't had time to play nurse, he wasn't on Akaashi's side. He couldn't know what he had done.</p><p>"Tsukki?" He murmured, terrified from head to toe. Bokuto licked his lips.</p><p>"Yup, Tsukki."</p><p>"What was Tsukki doing there?"</p><p>He was just passing through. He knows nothing. He was helping. Akaashi hadn't told him about the hunters. Akaashi hadn't told him about the wolves. Akaashi hadn't told him that he had tried to kill him. Please, that Bokuto say one of those prayers, that Tsukishima has not been avoiding him because he hates him, because he does not want to be with him.</p><p>"In the first place, keep me company because your colleagues had the wonderful idea of breaking my leg," Bokuto confessed, patting the wooden table with an uncomfortable grin on his face. He had noticed the panic in his friend's eyes, it was as if he could read his mind through it, and that angered him, it bothered him to the core because in his opinion, Kuroo had no right to be scared like that.</p><p>Kuroo cleared his throat without understanding what Bokuto was referring to. Was he trying to say that it was the hunters who, in fact, had caused the injury? Akaashi had mentioned it during the fight, but he hadn't believed him. They weren't like that, they wouldn't hurt an innocent. They were there to protect people from the monsters that lived together as one! It was impossible. Why was Bokuto lying to him?</p><p>“Can you believe it? Keiji and I were on our Friday date, that day you laughed because we hadn't sent any pictures and you thought we had headed straight for the bed, yeah, well, what we were at the cinema,” he began to relate, stopping looking at Kuroo and lowering his eyes to the steaming and not touching coffee. “We were looking for a place to eat ice cream when suddenly we found ourselves cornered in an alley by three Akaashi’s classmates, I think. They start insulting my boyfriend, they call him a dog, they call him an animal, and I don't know what they're talking about. Then, they pull out a fucking gun.”</p><p>Kuroo paled. It was as if, in fact, he was in that same alley, watching the scene as just another spectator. He could visualize the three attackers, whom he would later find open in the channel, pointing at his two friends with the same gun that he had used on Akaashi. Bokuto almost enjoyed the look of utter terror on her face, realizing that perhaps he had spent a lot of time with Tsukishima, and sighed.</p><p>"They had a gun and they wanted to kill Akaashi, when he hadn't done anything."</p><p>"He… Do you know what he did next, Bo? He... He's a mon…”</p><p>Bokuto hit the table, again being the center of attention, preventing Kuroo from letting that word out.</p><p>"Don't call them that," he exclaimed furiously. "Don't you dare insult them like that, Kuroo."</p><p>Them.</p><p>Kuroo's blood pressure dropped the second the words clicked in his brain. Bokuto was speaking in the plural and he was sure he was not going to like the answer to why.</p><p>"I tried to get closer, stand in front of Keiji, take the gun from him, do whatever it takes to save him, and all of a sudden I found myself lying on the ground," Bokuto continued. Kuroo gulped, nervous, agitated, not wanting to hear more of the story. “I was on the ground and Keiji was looking at me from above with pure terror, I didn't know what had scared him so much. His eyes moved to my knee and when I wanted to realize it, the bone was sticking out of the skin. I ... I don't remember anything else.</p><p>“He left them unrecognizable, that was a carnage, Bo…”</p><p>Bokuto interrupted him again.</p><p>"He didn't want that, we weren't looking for a fight. We wanted a damn ice cream."</p><p>The waiter approached, then the two men fell silent. He placed a bag in front of Bokuto and he smiled at him in gratitude, making sure that inside was what he had asked for. Kuroo frowned, not understanding why his friend didn't eat there with him. He let out a sigh.</p><p>"Why are you telling me this?" Kuroo asked. Bokuto shrugged, grabbing the bag and pulling it off the table. He raised his gaze to the opposite.</p><p>“I thought you were different, Kuroo, I really spent whole nights arguing with Tsukki convinced that you weren't like that. That you wouldn't attack someone who was going to buy ice cream.”</p><p>"I'm not like them," he whispered. He wasn't, was he?</p><p>"It was what I thought!" The yell this time was a little more subdued, anyway, the waiter had an eye on them ready to interrupt any hint of a fight. "Until you tried to kill Keiji."</p><p>“I did it for you. I thought he had you kidnapped, you hadn't answered me in weeks and he was there, so calm in his fucking class, I... I thought he had done something wrong to you,” Kuroo tried to excuse himself. He had never been so angry as that Friday. He had never been so hated by the sweet smell that had always enveloped his friend.</p><p>“He saved me!” Bokuto closed his eyes. Tears had condensed in his eyes and at any moment they would start to fall down his cheeks, something he couldn't allow to happen. He snorted, trying to calm his heart, and under Kuroo's watchful eyes he started to sit up. "And all you do is hurt."</p><p>Bokuto adjusted the crutches under his armpits. He took out a few bills from his wallet not caring too much if they were enough to pay the bill, after all, he had taken a couple of slices of the cake. He grabbed the bag, hovering over his shoulder, and took a quick glance around the cafeteria as if he was tired of everything going on around him. As if the conversation he was having with Kuroo was a complete waste of energy.</p><p>"Look, Kuroo, I didn't come here for me," Bokuto admitted, "not for Akaashi, much less for you."</p><p>Kuroo, who was still sitting, without moving a bit of his muscles, looked at him without understanding what he was referring to.</p><p>“I came here for Tsukki. He… He had hope,” Bokuto confessed. Kuroo covered his ears, staring at the coffee, not that, not that, please. “I wanted to make sure if he should continue like this, because it's not healthy sitting around waiting for you to come after him without knowing if when you see him you're going to try to drive a dagger into his heart."</p><p>The hunter grabbed Bokuto by the wrist as he turned around, having delivered the final hit with the comment that he knew would affect him. "I can't let you go with them, you have no idea what they really are like."</p><p>Bokuto frowned, shaking his arm.</p><p>"It's you who has no idea."</p><p>The man stumbled out of the cafeteria with his crutches, the bag of sweets going from one side to the other on his back, the same one in which Kuroo fixed his gaze feeling like the world was falling apart. He hurriedly took out his own wallet and, dropping a couple more bills, ran off chasing the unheard-of perfume that Bokuto had left behind. He saw him across the street, then, getting into a car while Akaashi helped him and Tsukishima held onto his crutches.</p><p>As if he had smelled him, which made sense now that he had discovered that he was also a werewolf, Tsukishima raised his head to stare at the hunter's figure. He said nothing, did not warn his other two companions or whoever the person was driving, but stood there with a lost look on his face, watching him with a sadness that he had never seen in him before.</p><p>Akaashi asked him to come in and Tsukishima sighed. He shook his head, not towards who was waiting for him inside the vehicle, but towards Kuroo himself who had remained immobile in his place. He wasn't going to come near, nor was he going to talk to him. They were not going to explain. Tsukishima ignored him, then, getting into the back seats.</p><p>The car started up and Kuroo was left alone.</p><p>-</p><p>The three men share a look. They had left Kuroo alone for so long, consumed by his own thoughts, that they couldn't remember those months without actually shuddering. They hadn't done things right either, they had made mistakes and failed multiple times. They don't say anything, they don't comment on this latest acquisition to the story, and it is Kuroo who breaks the silence with his eyes embedded in the camera lens.</p><p>"Now is when my favorite part comes," he says.</p><p>Bokuto laughs: "The grand finale!"</p><p>"About time," Tsukishima snorts, to which the narrator sticks his tongue out. Akaashi stretches his arms, pulling away from his boyfriend for a couple of seconds before taking refuge under his touch again.</p><p>“Dad, Mom, the story ends a good few months later, continuing in Sendai. We stand at the door of the Tsukishima house, not the one in the forest, but their mother's.”</p><p>-</p><p>He had been to that house a couple of times. Not as many as he would have liked, but enough to tell him that the bathroom was at the end of the hall to the right, or that it was on the top shelf next to the refrigerator where glasses were kept. He had rarely slept in, lying on the guest futon next to Tsukishima's single bed, talking until late hours about how volleyball was going, or else his college life. In all those times, the boy's mother had never been found at home.</p><p>Kuroo didn't find it strange. After all, Tsukishima had told him that his grandparents had a house in the country and that her mother took refuge in it every weekend since her father was no longer with them. The smell on its walls was the same that had caused him to attack him in the first moment, back in his teens during summer camp, a scent as sweet as strawberry syrup, sugary and sweet. The fragrance with which Tsukishima himself wandered around, intoxicating his senses, to which he was already used to, to which he did not see anything strange.</p><p>He had thought for a while that he had made that mistake because he was attracted to the boy. He had simply confused his pleasant smell with the one they used to teach in high school and, in his head, it was a very good excuse, not to admit his failure, nor to review the theory that Tsukishima ended up being a werewolf. Before he knew it, as he got together more with the boy and his group of friends became more established, the justification that he had put in ended up becoming one of the most painful truths of his existence.</p><p>As it turned out, he did indeed have a crush on Tsukishima and was, in fact, a lycanthrope.</p><p>Kuroo had never felt so empty as when he saw his three friends drive off in that car, when the truth fell on him like a bucket of cold water, waking up from the fantasy he had been living in all that past time. He realized that there was no future of any kind for the two of them, three, and four. Bokuto didn't even want to know anything about him and he was the human he believed to have been protecting from the skin-changing creatures.</p><p>He lived with that thought for a couple of months, yet the twenty-one year old Kuroo was willing to try to change his fate. And he was going to start with that house.</p><p>The woman opened the door, her long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, a sharp expression of surprise plastered on her face, expecting a person completely other than a hunter. His smell, as happened with all of his ilk, gave him away. The lady did not flinch, but narrowed her eyes without being entirely sure who it was, and tilted her head asking what he wanted. Kuroo sighed, his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, holding out the cold of winter.</p><p>"I am Kuroo Tetsurou," he introduced himself. Tsukishima's mother raised her eyebrows in recognition, and without allowing another second to pass out there invited him to come in.</p><p>"I've heard a lot about you!" She exclaimed, grabbing his coat and hanging it on the wall, pointing a finger down the hall for him to continue on his way. Kuroo felt helpless before the normality with which the lady received him. "If you're looking for Kei, let me tell you, he don't live around here long anymore."</p><p>Kuroo frowned, not understanding where his friends were then, and accepted the seat the lady offered him at the dining room table. He politely denied the request for a glass of water, sitting up straight and his hands clasped in his lap, somewhat nervous.</p><p>“Yeah, well… I want to see him. To see everyone,” Kuroo explained. He sighed, surveying the family home, and repeated to himself that he had come there with the intention of solving the problem once and for all. He had nothing to fear. "But most of all, I wanted to apologize. With them and with you, with your family. With ... Your kind.”</p><p>Tsukishima's mother smiled at him, leaning her hips on the edge of the dining room table, casting a reassuring look at the man. Se fell silent, allowing Kuroo to take his time to continue putting into words what had been rambling through his head for so long.</p><p>"I never knew anything different." My mother had been a hunter her entire life and she devoted her body and soul to teaching my sister and me everything she knew from when we were very little. When she died… I held on to what she had told me,” Kuroo continued. Kenma had always complained about why he continued to attend the hunters' monthly meetings or why he got into unsolved murders as if he were some kind of caped hero who would save humanity from those monsters. "About the lycanthropes being mons… Wild animals."</p><p>Kuroo leaned his elbows on the table, hiding his face under his hands and Tsukishima's mother did not ask again if he needed that glass of water, but simply put it in front of him. It seemed that the boy had a hard time expressing what he felt. He reminded her somewhat of her own son.</p><p>“So, then they came. Tsukki arrived…” Kuroo shook his head, as if he had made a mistake, and raised his gaze to meet the same golden eyes as the woman. “Kei came along, and I stopped knowing how to tell what was right from what was wrong. What should I do? Forget the creed by which I had ruled my life? Defile my mother's memory and simply...? I don't know, follow the guidelines of my heart, or something like that.”</p><p>The lady approached Kuroo to wrap her arms around his neck, taking the right to hold him against her chest and stroke his hair while allowing tears to begin to flow from her eyes.</p><p>"Oh, honey…" She murmured, feeling like she had been through that same situation recently with each of the special friends her son had brought home. "Keiji-kun has said a couple of times that you are still like a child. That you needed your time.”</p><p>Kuroo hadn't felt so comforted in a while, he let the tears ruin Tsukishima's mother's sweater and told himself that later he would apologize for it as well. From the outside it should look pathetic as a grown man was crying his eyes out being hugged by a middle-aged lady he barely knew.</p><p>The doorbell rang again and Tsukishima's mother separated from him, holding out the napkins for him to wipe his face, as she walked to the entrance of her house to open to people she had been waiting for a long time.</p><p>"Good morning, Hikaru-san! Tsukki asked me to bring him a couple of books to study over the holidays,” The voice that Kuroo recognized as Yamaguchi's echoed down the hallway of the house. The hunter rose from his chair, assuming that his work there was more than finished and that, therefore, it was time to look elsewhere for his friends. "Kenta wanted to stretch his legs a bit, so we planned to stay with them for the weekend."</p><p>"Oh, perfect, I ‘ve some tuppers that Kou-chan was asking for, besides, I need you to bring something else," Hikaru replied, appearing down the hall and grinning at Kuroo.</p><p>"Why does it smell so bad?" A third voice complained. It was Kyoutani, Yamaguchi's boyfriend, whom Kuroo didn't know personally. He was the second to appear in the room and, as soon as his eyes fell on the hunter's body, his brow furrowed in a straight line and his teeth became huge fangs. He growled, like a mad dog, while his hands caught Yamaguchi's waist and hid him behind him. "What is this doing here?"</p><p>Hikaru, the matriarch of the Tsukishima, shot Kyoutani with a warning look. Kuroo was genuinely surprised, not at all expecting that this boy was actually a lycanthrope too. Was everyone and he hadn't noticed? It was a failure even for that!</p><p>"I've come to ask for forgiveness," he confessed.</p><p>When the woman made sure that the werewolf was not going to jump on Kuroo's neck, nor to wreck his living room, Yamaguchi surprised himself by coming out of his boyfriend's arms and walking with a decisive step towards the hunter. He had let out a snort that was practically overshadowed by Hikaru's scandalized screech, before his fist landed on Kuroo's nose with a force he had no idea where he had come from. The hunter turned his face at the effusiveness of the blow, bringing one of his hands to the damaged area, stunned by the blood that began to flow.</p><p>Kyoutani whistled, saving his own fangs, quite pleased.</p><p>"You have no rights!" Yamaguchi yelled. "Do you have any idea how much suffering people like you have caused!? You are the only ones who behave like real animals! And now you have the face to come here to annoy this woman with your cheap lies?”</p><p>His boyfriend stepped forward to grab his arm, preventing him from throwing a second punch, and pulled him into his body in a vague attempt to calm him down. Hikaru frowned, glaring at Yamaguchi in an angry and recriminating manner for being so violent. He wasn't her son, but she wasn't going to allow him to behave like that at home. He had spent enough time with her to have permission to sing her forty when she felt like it.</p><p>"Tadashi, for God's sake, he's asking for forgiveness!" The woman exclaimed, walking towards Kuroo with more napkins on her face with which to clean up the mess Yamaguchi had created. "He is sorry and you are going to take him with the others."</p><p>Kyoutani snorted, not being much of a fan of the idea of putting a werewolf hunter in his car, and Yamaguchi just shook his head.</p><p>"He can't see Tsukki."</p><p>"Tadashi…" Hikaru complained. Yamaguchi crossed his arms and the woman wondered if he really had to behave like this at the moment. Undoubtedly, the protective shell that he had put around his son since he found out what it was back in his childhood continued to be just as imperforable. Kuroo carefully pushed the woman aside forcing him to tilt his head back to look at the boy.</p><p>"Yamaguchi, I need to see them," he said. "At least ask for their forgiveness."</p><p>Yamaguchi was not entirely convinced. His best friend had suffered so much because of him, werewolves, in general, had suffered so much for people like him, that he did not know how to take his words. However, Kyoutani squeezed the circumference of his arm, drawing his attention and telling him, without a single word, that his feeling was genuine. That he felt it in the air as if it were the smell of good food. The boy shook his head, defeated.</p><p>"Well, whatever. I'm going to get the books, Kenta takes the tuppers. See you in the car,” Yamaguchi complained, pointing to his boyfriend the way to the kitchen, despite already knowing which one it was. Hikaru smiled then, being alone again with Kuroo and his endless nosebleed.</p><p>"Thanks," Kuroo said, pressing the paper against his nostrils. The woman nodded, making sure to give Kuroo enough napkins for the trip.</p><p>"It's nothing, but…" She lowered her voice, approaching the man's ear with a bit of difficulty due to the height. "I'm not going to let you hurt my family again, so don't try it."</p><p>Kuroo's legs trembled, guessing now that Tsukishima's mother had spoken to him in that way that this woman was the alpha wolf of the pack she was a part of, who had the ability to bite her head off if she did propose. That not even all his years of training would save him from certain death. It was better for him not to screw it up again.</p><p>“I won’t.”</p><p>Kuroo sat in the backseat of Kyoutani's car, assuming for sure that it was the same vehicle in which he had seen his three friends flee months ago, sniffing the air in the foolish hope that the scent familiar to one of them continued to be impregnated in the seats. Unfortunately, he didn't, but the only thing his nose was able to reach was the freshly cooked food from the tupperware that he had on the side, along with the high school books that Yamaguchi had taken for Tsukishima.</p><p>"I guess we won't stay," Kyoutani said after giving Kuroo a quick, annoyed, suspicious one in the rear view mirror. Yamaguchi, sitting in the passenger seat, rested his hand on his boyfriend's thigh and smiled tenderly at him, causing the hunter to suddenly feel like a complete candle holder. If he was honest with himself, it would never have crossed his mind that Yamaguchi, the shy Yamaguchi was coming off as an aggressive werewolf as Kyoutani seemed to be. Yet there they were, glancing at each other as if they were made for each other.</p><p>“You suppose pretty well. But we can still camp on the hill, if you still feel like taking a walk,” Yamaguchi suggested, ignoring Kuroo's existence in the back of the car. Kyoutani nodded, releasing one hand from the steering wheel to rest it on top of the fingers Yamaguchi had left on his leg, entwining them and pulling them toward the gear stick to move together.</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>Kuroo stopped paying attention to them to focus on the path they were traveling. A couple of minutes ago they had left the crowded streets and buildings behind to get onto the highway, taking all the exits that went to the most rural part of the province, so Kuroo assumed they were heading to the country house that Tsukishima had named so many times. His foot began to bounce nervously, anxious at the meeting for which little time was left, feeling that he was dying to see each of his friends.</p><p>They arrived at the house about an hour later, having traveled a wild dirt road that caused his body to jump on the seat, almost believing that Kyoutani was only hitting the potholes and stones in the road to annoy him a bit. Whether or not it was that way, Kuroo would never know. The truth is that he was a little afraid to ask and that one of the other two people would bite him.</p><p>"Wait here, okay?" Yamaguchi told him before getting out of the car. Kuroo nodded his head, unwilling to disobey his orders, and watched as the couple grabbed the things they had brought and headed inside the cabin. If the hunter hadn't been thinking over and over again about the way the other three men would react to his presence, he would have been comparing the little house to the one in that romantic vampire and werewolf movie.</p><p>Yamaguchi took a quick glance at Kyoutani, asking him what he thought of the situation, before opening the door and announcing his arrival. His boyfriend shrugged and they assumed that what was going to happen was, after all, inevitable. Whether they got in the way or not was just going to lead to unnecessary problems.</p><p>“We’re here!” Yamaguchi exclaimed, then, when he had the courage to enter the home. He went to the kitchen followed closely by Kyoutani, who after putting the food on the counter began to look for the necessary backpacks for his night camping. Bokuto raised the crutch, hidden behind the couch, revealing his head behind a sports magazine.</p><p>“Is that food?”</p><p>Yamaguchi hummed an affirmative. "Hikaru-san sent it to you."</p><p>Bokuto got up as fast as he could to approach the newcomers with some excitement at the aforementioned tupperware. He felt his mouth water then, leaning on the counter and bringing the plastic closer to his nose. Delicious.</p><p>"Did you bring the books?" A voice asked upstairs. Yamaguchi yelled that he had, noticing Tsukishima coming down from the top floor with Akaashi following close behind, while asking Kyoutani to grab a couple of blankets as well. Tsukishima frowned. “What’s that smell?”</p><p>“Chicken soup! Tsukki, your mom is the best…” Bokuto whined, showing him the food that he had already opened. Akaashi shook his head.</p><p>"Did you bring bread?"</p><p>Yamaguchi was going to answer that no, that no one had asked him, but Tsukishima interrupted him pointing at Kyoutani, who kept moving from one place to another looking for the material.</p><p>"Won't you stay for the weekend?"</p><p>Kyoutani grunted as if the idea bothered him, while his boyfriend just shook his head. "I think you are going to need a little space."</p><p>No one asked why, and the truth was, it wasn't like it was necessary either. Bokuto had been distracted by the food, devouring them two at a time and threatening to finish them off before lunch, and both Akaashi and Tsukishima had shared a suspicious look in which they shared the same theory that crossed their minds.</p><p>The couple left the cabin with their arms full and with great difficulty they managed to get it inside the trunk, between a couple of shoves and very few hours of Tetris play, under the intense eyes of Tsukishima who was watching them through one of the windows from the kitchen. Yamaguchi got into the car, then, sitting back in the passenger seat, and turned to face his passenger.</p><p>"You are warned, Kuroo-san," he threatened.</p><p>Kuroo nodded his head and saw in his comment the clear way to finally get out of the vehicle. The cold winter air hit him too hard and, feeling his legs go limp, he told himself he couldn't. That the most reasonable thing was to get in that car and be returned to the city. That Tsukishima, Akaashi and Bokuto didn't want to see him even in painting. However, Kyoutani had jumped into his seat and started the engine as fast as his long legs hit the ground.</p><p>So there was no going back. He turned, then, with his eyes on the door of the cabin. He shuddered when he realized that both Akaashi and Tsukishima were already there, looking at him with their arms crossed and their faces serious, without even a bit of surprise on his face because they had already smelled his scent. Bokuto, who had been left behind concentrating on his food, made a gap between his friends to see what they were seeing.</p><p>"Kuroo?"</p><p>The man opened his mouth and closed it, gasping like a little fish, forgetting the words he had rehearsed so many times. He felt the tears coming back to his eyes and was grateful that at least his nose had stopped bleeding, because he was sure he couldn't look so pathetic and miserable.</p><p>"I'm sorry..." he murmured so low that the three men, at their distance, were unable to understand him. So he repeated it. “I'm sorry.”</p><p>Bokuto didn't need anything else. He let the crutch fall on the wood of the porch, not giving a damn about the stability of his leg, and began to run towards his friend, with great effort and completely ignoring the pain, to receive him with a huge hug that made them fall on the earth.</p><p>"I'm sorry," Kuroo repeated, closing his eyes and clenching his fists on Bokuto's back, keeping every second of that meeting like gold in cloth in his memory under the fear that by raising his eyelids he will find himself in the empty bed from his lonely apartment. Bokuto began to sob, bringing their bodies closer together if he was capable of it, assuring his friend that that touch was real, that they really were together, again.</p><p>Akaashi and Tsukishima continued in the entrance, their fingers intertwined and watching the scene from the prudent meters. The youngest reached down, then, to grab the crutch that Bokuto needed, and they approached the duo to lift them off the ground before they got dirty enough. Tsukishima touched Bokuto's shoulder, warning him that they were there too, and he separated himself from Kuroo, using it as support to stand up. Tsukishima put an arm around his waist with the excuse of holding him so as not to have to approach the newcomer.</p><p>It was the other wolf, then, who helped the hunter up from the ground. Kuroo was full of tears, snot, and dried blood that littered his nose, mouth, and shirt. He was a complete mess wherever I looked at him, from his shaggy hair to his swollen and flushed face, to his clothes full of damp earth at his feet completely buried in the mud. Akaashi let out a big, long sigh.</p><p>"I'm sorry," he said again. Akaashi raised the corners of his mouth in a very pleasant grin.</p><p>"Okay," he assured Kuroo, raising one of his hands to his face, cupping his cheeks and brushing off the mess he'd made with his thumb. “You are here now.”</p><p>"I never meant to hurt you," Kuroo continued crying, certainly grateful that Kyoutani and Yamaguchi had disappeared at such speed from the scene, somewhat embarrassed at their inability to stop sobbing. "I never wanted to fight you."</p><p>Akaashi pulled him towards him, hugging him by the neck and bringing him breasts as close as he could. Kuroo clasped his hands around the other's hips, digging his nose against his collarbone and inhaling the fragrance he almost thought had been forgotten. It wasn't disgusting, nor was it disgusting, it was as delicious and pleasant as the one in Tsukishima's house, and when it entered his lungs, getting his sense of smell drunk, it made him feel as comfortable as home. Akaashi allowed his skin to serve as a tissue for his tears, stroking the hair on the back of Kuroo’s neck in a comforting way, closing the eyes, and simply enjoying the moment.</p><p>"Don't worry, you're here, it doesn't matter," the lycanthrope whispered.</p><p>He turned away from him when he heard a sob coming from Bokuto's mucous throat less than a meter beside him and, wiping the tears on Kuroo's face one last time, he walked away from him to exchange his place with Tsukishima's. He looked at him fearfully, reluctantly approaching him almost as if he had been forced.</p><p>He watched Kuroo, who was in front of him, with his red eyes and cold-cut lips, looked at the scar on his eyebrow and wondered if he had noticed the one Akaashi had on his lip. He looked at him and remembered the last time they had seen each other, in that busy cafeteria in the center of the city, in how he had felt, in the unease that had reigned in his heart and had declared himself king of his emotions. He saw his sleepless nights, Akaashi's or Bokuto's. He saw the guilt, the grief, and the sadness, and realized that he didn't want to hear any more empty words.</p><p>"Don't tell me you're sorry," he braced himself. He stepped forward at the opponent's lack of movement, noticing Akaashi's gaze on him, asking him not to be too harsh. “Why are you here?</p><p>Kuroo looked back at him. The panic, the terror. He wanted the truth and demanded it as an obligation to enter their lives again, as the password in a luxury club, as the fundamental requirement for the coexistence of the four as one. The hunter, the excavator at this point, breathed heavily in an attempt to calm the high speed at which his heart worked.</p><p>"Because I love you," he confessed. "Because I love you guys so much that I can't spend a single second more without you by my side."</p><p>Tsukishima found it more than enough, as he lowered his guard and his shoulders relaxed, thus allowing Bokuto and Akaashi to crush him against Kuroo's chest in a hug that had not been expected. The crutch fell back to the ground and the tears fell again like great torrents of water down the cheeks of those four boys.</p><p>"We love you too, bro!" Bokuto continued sobbing into Akaashi's hair. “Don't do something like that again…”</p><p>"Yeah, it wouldn't be bad if you stopped killing us," Akaashi suggested, hiding behind Tsukishima's back. "Or stab us."</p><p>Kuroo laughed uncomfortably; "I am…”</p><p>"Shut up," Tsukishima demanded, preventing him from saying those two words again, lost in the fragrance on his neck. "Stop asking for forgiveness."</p><p>“But…”</p><p>“It’s not your fault,” he said then, tightening his arms around his hips a little more, taking the last turn to speak.</p><p>It hadn’t been his fault.</p><p>-</p><p>Tsukishima continues to pat Kuroo's back while Akaashi opens the second packet of tissues. At some point in the end of his story, perhaps because of all the wine he's had, or the simple fact that he's always been sentimental, Kuroo had started crying and wiping his snot on the hem of his shirt. Bokuto had laughed at him for the first few seconds before joining in with his own salt water running aimlessly down his eyebrows, yet he had managed to compose himself to finish the tale.</p><p>The two werewolves are doing quite well. Let's see, yes, they are as excited as their other two boyfriends about that sentimental section, but they don't have the need to shed tears about it. They already did so much at the time that the process was repeated every time they remember it.</p><p>"After that, everything went for the better," Bokuto continues, getting up from his stool to put all his used tissues on the coffee table. “Kei entered the same college as Keiji, while Tetsu continued with his career, and I started with the physical therapist, as you know. Our Tetsu was in charge of making any suspicions about the naturalness of Keiji disappear and even today he is in charge of clearing their names every time they come up, hence why we want to go live in the forest,” he explains, returning to his seat and leaning on him, without his butt completely touching the bench. “Tadashi-kun managed to put up with Tetsu.”</p><p>"I had completely forgotten that he had punched you," Akaashi laughs, looking at the principal victim with some amusement. Kuroo runs the back of his hand over his nose and pouts, pretending that the comment had offended him.</p><p>"I thought he was going to eat me!" He complains. Tsukishima smiles at him tenderly, resting his head on Akaashi's shoulder.</p><p>"Oh come on, Yamaguchi adores you," convinces the blonde. “You are his, as he likes to call you, favorite “brother-in-law” after Keiji and Kou.”</p><p>"That makes me last!"</p><p>Bokuto makes a disinterested gesture, drawing the attention of his boyfriends and assures Kuroo that he shouldn't worry about it. Yamaguchi likes him very, very well, despite the ups and downs they had at the beginning.</p><p>“Well that, the point is that we had no problems again," he says, to finish with his video. Raise his hand remembering something. “Oh, there was that matter with Teru-chan, do you remember?"</p><p>“Or Sakusa-san and Miya-san’s story”</p><p>Akaashi interrupts his rambling before he decided to add more information to the video: "That stories would be better for another day."</p><p>Bokuto seems to agree.</p><p>"Well, well, what was I coming up with with all this?" He wonders, more to himself than anything else, and watches his boyfriends, a bit confused. “Oh, yes! Mom, dad, I'm Koutarou, I'm twenty-seven years old and I'm completely in love with these three people you see here. We have two beautiful and lovable werewolves, and then a killer burrower, making me the least cool of this indivisible pack. Still, I would be able to defend them with body and blood no matter from what, who, or when. I would, because they are the most precious thing I have in this universe, because they are the most beautiful gift that destiny could have given me, because I would be nothing without any of them. They are the people I want to spend my life with.”</p><p>Bokuto stands up then, pulling something out of his pocket. Holding on to the stool, he manages to lean on the floor on his good knee, to the surprise of his three boyfriends, who each observe him more confused than the last, lost before the man throws them.</p><p>"These are the people I want to marry."</p><p>Oh shit, think the other three. How did they tell Bokuto now that the red light on the camera had been turned off a while ago</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Some hc cuz I can:<br/>-Atsumu, Saeko, Kiyoko, Osamu, Teru, Kyoutani, Akaashi, Tsuki, Akiteru and all Date Tech are lycan.<br/>-Sakusa, Kuroo, all Nekoma and Nohebi are hunters.<br/>-Akaashi, Teru, Hikaru and Atsumu are alphas.<br/>-Kyoutani, Terushima and Yamaguchi lives in a farm with two adoptive daughters that are werewolves too. Happy family yes sir.<br/>-SakuAtsu story is so sad like sosososos sad but I haven't write it xD.<br/>-After KyouYama leaves the house, they made out so bad.<br/>-It's kinda a soulmate au?<br/>-I want to marry Yams.<br/>-Tsukki being soft only with Bokuto lives free in my mind.<br/>-Tsukki’s dad died and also did Kuro's mom, so they talked about this a lot when the first met.<br/>-KuroAka is just savage and I am not going to accept a no.<br/>-I FUCKING SWEAR I DIDNT KNOW ABOUT THE FURRY THING WITH TSUKKI WHEN I WROTE THiS.</p><p> </p><p>Thats all. Hope u liked it! Tell me if you did xD I love this fic so much its kinda my baby now lol.</p><p>byeeee &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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